Why sourdough doesnt rise

DOGU : There's a reason we all love high-hydration bread. Those loaves last forever and they're delicious. Use a bench scraper in one hand to help move, shape, and scrape the bread dough off your surface. A little bench flour should help, too. But it's really hard to appreciate how long it takes.

DOGU : Use a container where you can see the height of the dough from the outside. When you finish mixing, put the dough in that container, and mark where the top of the dough is. The sourdough should reach at least 50 percent higher—so not doubled in size, but 50 percent larger in size before you want to shape it. But know that the more whole grain you use, the less you can tell fermentation from volume. If you're using all white flour and your dough is fermenting, you'll really be able to see it.

Same with the more water there is, you'll really be able to see it kind of bubble and rise up. If you're working with a stiffer dough and using more whole grain, it's going to be fermenting kind of in a smaller map. The rise is not going to be as dramatic. It's not going to show off as much. DOGU : After you shape it, it should increase another 50 percent.

And when you're shaping, especially for novice bakers, you want to do just a simple fold-and-tuck, handling the dough very gently, trying not to de-gas it too much. If you push the fermentation, you get so much more flavor and lightness and all the things that you want. Using a gentle hand, and possibly that bench scraper again, pull the shaped dough toward you to tighten its surface.

DOGU : Sourdough is supposed to split, but you should control it with a slash. DOGU : This one is really difficult to troubleshoot because it could be a few different things. But it also could be due to improper hydration. You know, the unfortunate, complicated truth is that your dough could be over -hydrated or under -hydrated.

I feel like, more often than not, the issue is under-hydrated—meaning you didn't put enough water into the dough. DOGU : If your hydration is low, increase it.

Did you wait long enough when proofing your bread? A lot of times I find bakers just needed to wait hours longer before baking. It's possibly under-baked. This is not a fault but a characteristic of these two flours.

Old flour Sometimes flour is not stored correctly or has passed the use-by date. Try to eliminate all the other possibilities before you throw your flour out. But I suggest buying some fresh flour and seeing if that solves the issue for you.

If you have used fresh, suitable bread flour and your precious loaf of sourdough bread is still flat and dense, the issue may have been with your sourdough starter. Sourdough starter needs to be turned into dough the moment it is has doubled. This is when your starter is at its strongest point, and therefore able to rise a good loaf of bread. This should occur after your most recent feed, assuming that your sourdough starter is healthy and active.

If you are storing your starter in the fridge, rather than on your kitchen bench, I recommend a 2-Step feeding process. One to revive your starter as it comes to room temperature and another to bring it to double in volume.

My key tip is this: Whatever your starter looks like when you add it to your bread dough, is what your bread will look like when you bake it. No matter how perfectly you bake it,. So long as the proofing processes of your dough goes OK, what you put into your sourdough dough, you will get in your loaf of bread. Exhausted sourdough starter When the environment in your kitchen is warm, your sourdough starter may double faster than expected.

If the sourdough starter is left too long in a doubled state, it will run out of food to grow any more and get hungry. What happens then is the structure begins to collapse, causing the starter to deflate or go back down. You may notice this especially if you gently tap your jar on the kitchen bench. You can also tell because the mix seems wetter and more sloppy than when you fed it last and instead of being a strong web of strands and air pockets beneath the surface, it is starting to liquefy.

Your sourdough starter has deflated liked like a leaky balloon. Your starter will need feeding and left to double again before it can be used. The loaf will be tasty but flat. This is a risk in warmer environments.

Keep your sourdough somewhere you can see it and see our rescue for deflated sourdough for other helpful hints.

Weak sourdough starter can look just like a deflated and exhausted sourdough starter. You will be able to tell because the surface will be dense with few, if any bubbles. It may also need some warmer temperatures to help it along. If this process exceeds days without your sourdough starter doubling, it may not ever become viable. Consider buying a sourdough starter that is already active and save yourself the hassle and heartache of baking sourdough bread that comes out flat.

I had plenty of heartache in the beginning! If you want a way to feed your sourdough starter less often, browse low-maintenance sourdough starter. See How to keep sourdough warm even in winter for some simple hacks that will encourage your flakes to grow! This does a great job too. This will help it to rise upwards and maintain a good alveoli structure rather than spreading out and losing its structure. This is generally done by folding the dough over itself to create a tight and smooth surface before putting the dough in the banneton, seam side up.

When sourdough overferments, the gluten begins to break down and turns into a sticky pool of liquid. This means that all the effort you put into making your sourdough will seem wasted. A common method to use for determining whether your sourdough is proofed or not is the poke test or finger dent test. This simple test is done by poking your finger into the proofing dough and observing the result. Gluten is your best friend if you want your bread to have any structure at all.

In order to get the most rise out of your bread, you want to maximize gluten development. This is done either with a lot of physical kneading, with time, or a combination of physical kneading and time. Take out what you're going to bake with, then feed it again. And here's the thing — don't just put it back in the fridge.

Let it sit out for a few hours to get the process going, then pop it back in the fridge. Making a loaf of sourdough bread can take a long time — longer than most people can regularly fit into their busy schedule. And throwing away some perfectly good starter every time you feed it can seem like a waste. If that or the prospect of eating nothing but sourdough bread, all of the time is keeping you from trying your hand at sourdough, don't let it!

There's a ton of things you can make with that discarded sourdough starter, and some of them aren't just yummy, they're quick and easy. One of the best might just be whipping up a batch of sourdough crackers with just a cup of your discarded starter, a cup of flour, a dash of salt, and about a quarter cup of butter.

Mix, and add some spices, dried herbs, or even some cheese powder. It'll just take about 30 minutes in the fridge for the dough to firm until it's ready to roll. Roll, slice into bite-sized pieces, and bake at for 20 minutes. With just a slight adjustment use 2 and a half cups of flour instead of a cup, and let it rise for around 2 hours , you'll end up with a dough that's great for homemade pizzas.

You can also use it in other recipes that aren't going to take quite the time commitment. Make sourdough pancakes or waffles, add it to your blueberry muffins, and it's even a brilliant addition to a crumb cake.

It's not just for bread! When you think of sourdough, you probably think of regular old white flour, and that's fine — it's certainly a great place to start. But if you really want to have some fun and bake some truly delicious bread, you should absolutely try different kinds of flour. The principles of making the starter are the same, but different types of flour are going to give you different breads.

While white flours are generally mild and high-rising, whole wheat flours are going to give you a denser bread that doesn't rise as much — but still has more flavor packed into it. You can even get into the more obscure types of flours. True Sourdough says that using einkorn flour will give you a bread that's an Instagram-worthy gold color, while it's the sweet, nutty flavor that really makes a spelt loaf something special.

And rye flour is an absolute must-try when it comes to sourdough: the enzymes in rye help it ferment much faster than other flours, and the resulting loaves are dense but moist, and will have an almost fruity, complex flavor. This bread definitely isn't boring! While a sourdough starter might seem like it's high-maintenance, it's actually pretty forgiving. King Arthur Flour says doing things like giving it too much flour or water, or missing a few feedings isn't going to do any lasting harm to your starter.

This does, however, come with a "but. If there are any strange colors in your starter, it's time to dump it and start over. If you forget about your starter for a few days, you might start to notice a layer of liquid forming on the top. To some sourdough aficionados, that's called hooch, and it's a sign that you've gone too long without feeding.

Unless it's got a funny color to it, it doesn't mean your starter is ruined If it's a thin layer that's just starting to form, stir it up and feed it. But according to Sourdough Home , if it's more than what you'd consider "a little bit," and this depends on how wide your jar is , then pour it off.

Otherwise, you're going to end up with some seriously funky bread. One of the biggest complaints you might have about your sourdough loaf is that it's very, very dense when it finally comes out of the oven, and that could be because you didn't adjust your recipe when it you mixed your dough.

Basic sourdough bread recipes can be almost deceptively simple. Usually they just call for starter, flour, water, and salt, but just because there's only a few ingredients, that doesn't mean it's straightforward. The amount of water you actually need might not be what the recipe calls for. Traditional Cooking School explains it like this: different flours absorb water differently, so depending on the makeup of your starter and your flours, you might need to add more water If there's too much or too little water, your bread is going to be dense.

Unfortunately, there's no tried-and-true method for figuring out just how much water you'll have to add or cut out — it's something you're going to have to experiment with, and learn to recognize.