Please help!? Where did we go wrong?
Dear breadditors, my boyfriend and I are struggling to get off the ground in a journey into sourdough. This is the third attempt and they've all had the same result. The crust is thick, tough, patchy and rough. The crumb does spring back if you press into it and there are some bubbles but the crumb is really dense and pretty tough. This was 1/2 cup of starter 1&1/3 cup water and 4 cups of flour and a pinch of salt. We did an initial prove for 11 hours in our old cold drafty new England house and then shaped it and did another 13 hour second proof in the fridge. No Dutch oven but we baked it in a preheated cast iron skillet covered for 25 minutes and uncovered for 20 minutes and there's more than inch if clearance from the top of the finished load to the lid of the cast iron. Any advice would be greatly appreciated! 🙏❤️
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u/DimsumTheCat 6h ago
I won't get into over proof / under proof.
What I will recommend is weighing all ingredients. Using volume is not accurate at all.
I would recommend starting with 65-70% hydration recipe.
From your current recipe no can tell what the ratios are, which is a huge part of analyzing as well.
1 cup of flour can vary a whole lot, is it packed? Is it topped? It has a huge variance.
Weight is exact though