Figured out my sourdough was too wet after 8 months of flat loaves

I spent almost a year making sourdough that came out flat and dense every time. I kept adding more water because I thought hydration made it airy. Then a baker at my local shop in Portland looked at my dough and said 'that's soup, not dough.' She told me to drop from 80% hydration to 65% and my loaves finally got that open crumb I wanted. Has anyone else been adding too much water and making their bread worse?

3 comments

3 Comments

johnson.faith28d ago

Oh, is your friend the baker who told you to drop the hydration? Funny you mention that because my buddy Mark went through the exact same thing. He was obsessed with making those Instagram style sourdoughs with huge air pockets so he kept pushing his hydration up to like 85%. His loaves were basically flat pancakes that you could spread like butter. His wife finally told him his bread looked like a deflated memory foam mattress. He switched to 68% hydration and added a longer bulk ferment and now his crumb has those nice little holes without looking like a honeycomb. Took him a whole year of frustration to learn that wetter isn't always better.

dakota_patel9828d ago

Yeah but is it really that deep though. Like yeah flat bread isn't ideal but some people act like they're curing cancer with their starter. Mark spent a whole year upset about holes in bread? Thats a long time to be mad about dough. I get wanting good results but there are people out there who just dump flour and water together and end up with something edible. Maybe social media just makes everyone way too critical of their own kitchen experiments.

john65012d ago

nah I used to be one of those people too. I watched all those youtube videos about high hydration doughs and thought the wetter the better. I was chasing those big open holes like some kind of trophy. My loaves were basically flat discs that tasted good but looked terrible. Then I finally tried dropping my hydration down to like 68% after reading some forum advice and it was night and day difference. I felt so dumb for wasting months on dough that was basically pancake batter. Social media really messes with your head on what good bread looks like.