The Two Biggest Reasons Beginners Quit Baking Sourdough

Sometimes it's easy to overcomplicate things, often the answers to our problems are right under our noses. The biggest problems for new sourdough bakers to overcome are no different.

In this video, I'll do a side by side comparison. Two doughs, one made with a strong flour and one made with a soft flour and slightly higher hydration.

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Chapters:
0:00 The biggest Hurdles
1:01 The Sourdough Pyramid
3:10 The Contending Flours
3:40 Hydration
4:10 Mixing the Dough
5:10 First Peek at the Dough
5:55 Stretch No.1
6:40 Stretch No.2
7:20 Last peek
7:45 Shape
8:30 Bake
9:10 Checking Them Out

#sourdoughbaking

[CulinaryExploration]

Hey everyone. Some viewers have asked why I didn't use the same hydration for both flours. Here's my reasoning, (I did give it a lot of thought). I wanted to show that using a softer flour with slightly higher hydration has a huge impact on the dough when comparing it to a stronger flour and lower hydration. I wanted to demonstrate that both hydration and flour have an important role. If I had used the same hydration for both flours I would have demonstrated the difference in flour only. Finding the balance between the flour used and the hydration is key in my opinion. Apologies if it was unclear for some. If you want to see a different side by side then let me know! ATB Phil

[fathersonandskillet]

A lot of sourdough blogs and videos are showing great-looking loaves made with 80% or higher hydration, which can be done if you have the right flour and some experience handling high-hydration dough. A new baker probably won't have either. Thank you for almost always mentioning what your flour's protein content is. It makes a huge difference in choosing a workable hydration level. For instance, our usual sourdough is made with higher protein flour at 75% hydration but we also make baguettes with AP flour (probably 11% protein) at 65% hydration. By the way, it helps to learn the dough-handling techniques if you start with lower hydration and work your way up.

[petedavis]

One of the things that kept me from getting into sourdough, or really, any sort of bread, has been the messiness factor of flour. It's always been my nemesis. It sticks really bad to everything and it's a pain to get it off your hands. The way I make sourdough reflects this aversion to messy hands, and so I've developed this technique:
1> Rule #1: Wet dough, wet hands. Dry dough, dry & floured hands.
2> Mix flour, water & salt in a glass bowl. Mix with a plastic dough scraper, up until it's about mixed and I might do a little final mixing and folding with my hand (Wet hands!!!), just to make sure all the flour is well incorporated and wet, but not enough that my hands get too bad. Autolyze for an hour.
3> Add my starter and fold it into the dough ith as bunch of stretch & folds (hands wet!!!) until I feel it's well incorporated into the dough. Usually the way the dough responds, changes after 3 or 4 minutes and this is also an indicator that it's ready. Basically it becomes very easy to do a continuous stretch & fold without having to work the dough much to get it to stretch. This is by far the messiest step, but I find that my hands still wash very easily.
4> Leave the dough in the bowl. Do 3-4 stretch & folds every 15-20 mins (Wet hands!!!). I hardly get anything on my hands at this point and what does get on my hands washes off very easily.
5> Stretch out the dough onto the counter (Wet hands!!!) and make a long rectangle and roll it up and stick into the loaf pan to ferment & rise. This is also a very clean step.
So really, there's only the one step (#3) that's kinda messy in the sense that my hands have little bits of dough all over them, but because my hands are wet and the dough is wet, the dough washes off pretty easily in the sink.
I do think part of it comes from just learning how to handle the dough and I think that's kind of an individual thing that's probably hard, if not impossible to teach. I do certain little motions with my hands to unstick myself from dough and it's just kind of a learned muscle-memory thing over time and it does make it easier to handle dough, I think. I feel much more comfortable working with doughs in general, not just sourdough using this method, and a good bit of that, I think, is this just sort of learning to handle dough.

[DANVIIL]

If you made the weaker flour loaf with a 65% hydration, it would probably have turned out ok. I've used AP Flour in the US at this hydration and level with 20% Rye and it comes out fine and tastes great. I prefer to use bread flour with close to 13% protein and a 70% hydration. This was a good experiment to show new bakers how not to mess up hydration with protein level.

[melodysfiresidefarm]

Hello Phillip! I love the picture drawing, it's like school minus the chalk screeching on the board and the smell of glue :)) You do such a great job showing the difference and the why of it! Most would just keep adding flour instead of knowing to look for higher protein levels. This was so well done! Thank you for sharing!! The only bad thing about your video's is that there's only one a week!

[tac]

Good video, Phil. I lost my way with sourdough when I started watching an array of bods on Youtube rabbitting continuously on about high hydration doughs. If you can get good, strong flour then great. If you can't, forget it. Your videos put me back on track again. Thanks fella 👍
A cheeky little video on multigrain loaves will be appreciated.

[ginafactor]

This is so helpful. I’ve tried the higher hydration (a la Tartine) recipes, but the dough seems to be an unworkable mess, and the loaves come out flat with a tough crumb. You’ve given me great information on how to manipulate the variables to find the best balance and ratio for me. Thank you so much. Keep it coming!!! Love the comparisons

[DomBill]

Another awesome video Philip, fascinating insight into different protein and hydration levels, have to say you handled the sticky dough very well, the difference between them is so clear. Great video! :)

[RGS]

A quick recommendation regarding shaping, particularly helpful with sticky doughs, is the use of a nice wide metal bench scraper/bench knife .. which enables dough to be lifted cleanly off the bench, eliminates dough sticking to your fingers and the need for excessive flour late in the fermentation process

[nitesurfer]

I like how you work your strong flour dough .. as easy as folding a shirt... and thanks for showing us how nice a dough should work... unfortunately i been making a lot of flat crappy bread and now i know why ...so many vids make it look like u can knead your way out of a mess.... and I can tell you from my experience trying to knead and shape a wet sticky pile of wallpaper paste that never seems to magically firm up is pretty disheartening

[debbykeiran]

I stumbled onto your videos the other day and I am so glad I did! Made my first loaf with your method and although I think the hydration was a little too high it came out so good compared to all my previous loaves. I’m looking forward to seeing you show us recipes techniques using whole wheat flour in various proportions. My goal is 100% while wheat but until I can get better at this I’m trying 50%. Thank you!

[ErikNaso]

Great video and explanations. I'm a beginner and found that I wasn't doing my leaven right. It wasn't active enough before making it and had flat loafs. I do love the challenge of baking tasty sourdough.

[saskiaguy]

Your videos and the way your teach are beyond exceptional!

Just wanted to say a big thank you because I’ve just started my sourdough journey and my first bake was PERFECT! I’m delighted ☺️👌🏼

[natasharidore]

Thank you for this video!!! I literally was so frustrated with my sticky dough and I figured sourdough baking just isn't for me. This is so clear. Thank you!!!

[valeriegardiner]

Have struggled for a year perfecting the loaf watching your videos has helped me enormously thank you

[FlapjackR]

I only realised yesterday deep into establishing my starter that I accidentally used strong bread flour instead of plain flour. This video gives me hope that I haven't wasted 2 weeks building this starter for my daily bread.

[pzpierce]

This video is going to help many struggling beginners for sure! This problem is exactly why some people just give up. Thank you!

[rickb]

The more I watch your videos, the more I learn. Thank you so much for putting forth the effort to create them.

[Momma_Tomma]

Great video. I pretty much gave up on making sourdough because I couldn't maintain my starter properly. My home is never at a consistent temperature because we heat with wood in winter and have no AC in summer. Therefor there is no way to actually control the temperature which is vital for a good starter and overall success of the loaf.

[IrenaBurban]

Great inside to problems with flour, love it, I am a sticky dough victim.