There are absolutely no sourdough experiments on youtube including regular all purpose, supermarket 10% protein wheat flour. Except for now!!! Much thanks!!! Everyone, in their recipes, tend to use the highest quality bread flour automatically. And even when they do use so called all purpose, they are still using brands that have at least 11.7% like KAF. This experiment needed to be done. It dispels the myth that all purpose low protein flour can never be used for sourdough bread. You proved that, indeed, it can be done. One just has to use the correct technique. Kudos!!!
I know! People are making sourdough so freaking elite, but not everyone has access to the organic highend stuff. Or they want to save money. And if starters were all we had for thousands of years before baker's yeast, why wouldn't it work with AP flour? My starter is all AP.
Its almost as if you didnt need this experiment at all, right? Ive been baking sourdough bread with AP, or 550 in Europe, for years now, with no problems whatsoever. And Ill continue to do so. Sourdough bread is older than high gluten flour by a few thousands of years. You dont need a fancy technique or anything, just make it as you would with that kryptonite flour that is only available in USA. Wether it turns out the same or not I wouldn't really know, what I know is that it turns out extremely delicious and looking like any bread Ive seen online. Technique and ones ability to make a decent loaf is at least 3x more important than the type of white flour you use.
@@Qlicky The thing I wonder is how different AP is from what was/is produced simply by milling the grain. The flours I get all list a few more ingredients (added nutrients, mostly, probably).
I've been watching Bob's red mill's website, and they have been out of stock of everything for weeks. Luckily, my local Bi-Mart store was still stocked with Bob's AP and whole wheat, probably because their headquarters are both in Oregon. Just got a few more cases this weekend!
Don't mind me, just making personal notes for AP flour bread bc i'm running low on flours. 1:55 Formulation 2:32 Autolyse (1 hr) 3:26 Starter (30 mins) Then Bulk Fermentation 4:28 Second stretch and fold 5:58 3rd stretch, Window pane test, ferment at 30°C. Let rise for +50% volume 12:42 Pre-shape and ball, Bench Rest, and Final Shape 16:47 Score and Bake at 260 ° C 17:44 Final Product
If I’ve learned anything from watching these experiments you run, it’s that with enough skill any thing makes delicious bread. Cheap flour, expensive flour, coil folds, one hand folds, autolyse before or after salt... no matter what your bread is amazing.
You are the MAN! Every time I have a question and search RUclips, you have done an experiment on it. From the bread proofing box, to the cast iron bakers, and beyond. Thanks so much! Your videos are well produced, leaving no questions to your processes and my sourdough obsession results continue to improve. Incredibly helpful - just, . . wow.
Finally! I always say if you have flour, water salt and yeast/sourdough you can make bread/pizza. People think by using the most expensive high tech flour, they will produce good bread. I had so many conversations where people told me to try Manitoba flour and what not because it will make my pizza even greater but I get great results even with standard flour. Sure, there are some differences in hydration but that's the part where you need skill. Skill is what makes bread or pizza great. Thank you so much for this test! Great channel btw. and greetings to you, my neighbor, from Germany :)
One problem with using non organic flour is that the wheat fields in the U.S. have been treated with "Roundup" which gets into your wheat and thus your flour and finally your body. This is not the case in Europe. My mother always said buying quality food is still cheaper in the end than doctor bills. She was right. God bless her but she lived into her 90's and her father to 100. She sure knew what she was talking about.
I agree but i have to say good flour from a local mill can give you a better taste of a bread. For me and i´m also living in Germany, i have to say, i get my flour from a local mill to support the local companys and have also a better taste :)
Absolutely. In my opinion, too many people fuss and obsess over exactly this ratio or that amount of time or this kind of flour or this piece of kitchenware to the point where it's an obstacle to enjoyment. Those things can make a little bit of a difference, but really, bread making is pretty simple. With a little practice you can make almost any wheat flour, salt, yeast, and water into something absolutely delicious. I'm not belittling Sune and his explorations, it's always fun to explore and test variations, but I think the cult of bread making over the last few years is scaring off a lot of people by making it seem much harder than it really is.
I think another interesting version of this experiment would be to use what you consider to be optimal hydration for each flour. That takes more work to find those levels, but, as you imply, it is not quite fair to the specialty bread flour to use the same hydration level as the other flours. You'd probably find that the specialty bread flour performs even better than the others.
Yeah, I was wondering what a direct comparison of the three flours with the same relative hydration, rather than absolute as in the video, would look like! Fascinating experiment as usual, Sune. Thank you so much for sharing with the world.
Excellent video! My grandmother taught me how to make sourdough bread when I was young. Her starter was over 100-years old. Unfortunately, I was never able to keep her starter alive outside of the isolated canyon where she lived and had tried everything different waters, flours and temperatures. As strange as it may seem, it appeared to be a unique strain indigenous to the canyon. She made bread, in a huge enamel tub, for the whole town and her pancakes were famous for those traveling through. Today, with the virus, you deal with the flour that's available. About 6 months ago, my old standby Gold Medal wheat flour disappeared from the shelves and was forced to order 10-pounds online, and the dark rye isn't available the last I looked online. Thinking about making some sourdough Naan bread for Easter Sunday. Thanks much for the video.🥞🧇🥨🥖🍕
I usually use 85% unbleached bread and 15% whole wheat with a 65% hydration. I like the taste and color the ww adds. I use a modified technique combining some steps from Foodgeek, Bake with Jack and Tartine/Chad Robertson. All good. Love your experiments that usually debunk some 'truths' we mostly all accept without question. Keep the vids coming.
Manuel Marzolla it depends on the environment. I just lost my sourdough starter as the temperature started to climb here in Bangladesh. It’s also really humid here. It got mold. I also hadn’t fed it for about four days, so I don’t know if that made a difference or not. Thankfully I had some store bought yeast until I could decide if I wanted to try to restart my starter. I miss the flavor, so I going to, but will clean out its old spac in the fridge for it. I would recommend for a warmer, more humid climate to either feed it daily, or to keep in the fridge. But that’s just one observation from one environment, not a general recommendation.
You've provided a CALCULATOR to measure the ingredients in your formulas page and I LOVE you for that!! Just spent an hour trying to find exact amounts to use for a little bit of sourdough starter, all purpose flour, and water which is all I have and there you are; you cut the chase for me and really educated me on how the ratios work and how to calculate the exact amounts. Cannot THANK YOU you enough. I will definitely purchase merchandise to support your site after I make the bread.
Also, I'm feeding my starter nothing but el-cheapo supermarket flour. $2 for 5lb around my parts (Northeast US). Makes me 4 boules and feeds my started for a week. These days I'm working from home so I can feed it 2~3x/day. 10g starter, 10g el-cheapo flour, 10g water each time. Eats voraciously and easily triples.
Thank you for this. I found this video incredibly helpful, especially since I have a lot of AP flour to go through. Your pre-shaping / shaping chops memorized me into thinking I could do it just as easily on the first go. Guess what? I couldn't. BUT I'm glad to have a great visual guide for reference and will keep practicing this technique.
Today I baked a basic blond boule with Gold Medal bleached enriched all purpose flour so common in US supermarkets (~10.5% protein). It took 6 coil folds until it passed the window pane test. The resulting boule did not get a great oven spring. Still better than any supermarket bread, but I would say ~2/3 the normal oven spring I get with the unbleached AP flour. So it seems that one can only push this so far and there is a point where flour does matter. That said, the Gold Medal bleached AP is not any cheaper than the unbleached AP flour so for bread baking, there's no reason to buy it.
I've been making all my quarantine bread with all purpose flour, jim lahey's no knead bread recipe, and a "sourdough starter" that began as a piece of bread dough made with commercial yeast that I added homemade yogurt to. All yeast is, is a culture, if you let it age it gets stronger, it becomes more resistant to the acidic and alcoholic environment it creates from its waste products, if you put it in flour it will eat through the flour and reproduce through the whole thing, and you can save a piece of dough to use as your new starter. If you've got time and planning you can make a bread loaf with literally maybe 10 minutes of active work, and no special equipment.
How does this not glue to your hand? The stuff I made sticks like the absolute hell³. Touching it like you do is completely impossible. Even cleaning my hands was an immense effort.
it's nice to see you struggling with the supermarket AP flour. I feel validated with how frustrating my experiences and how gooey and sticky it gets with 80% hydration, and that I'm not the only one.
Been using only all purpose because it is recommended in Flour Water Salt Yeast. Its my first bread book and the breads came out great. Definitely going to explore other flours and books.
This is a great channel - I really appreciate all the time and effort you are putting into it with the sourdough experimentation, you are trying all of the different things I would love to try if I only had the time! I think you are also going a long way in taking a lot of the fear of sourdough baking out of the equation for new home bakers as well - great job!
Did you notice any difference in the 'chewiness' of the different breads? As others have mentioned, with the current difficulty in getting any flour, I'm stuck using AP flour. I add ~1 tablespoon 'vital wheat gluten' flour (70-80% protein) for each 1 cup of AP flour to add chewiness to the dough. Seems to work well! Another suggestion for you, I use cheap plastic shower caps to cover the bannetons in the fridge: they are reusable and look so cute!
@@totalspoon I got them from Amazon. I still have two that I collected from hotel rooms. They work well as bowl covers for potlucks, etc. Not that we can go to potlucks anymore. :-( www.amazon.com/gp/product/B071P3D7SH/
Hi Sune, I really like your experiments because they debunk the myths of baking bread. Thanks for all the effort you put in! Are you looking for a new experiment? I have a suggestion: Some bakers in Switzerland, Germany and maybe other countries use a so called scald when using wholemeal for a sourdough bread. They mix wholemeal flour with boiling water in a ratio 3:4 or 1:2. After cooling down, the scald is put overnight in the fridge. On the following day all the other ingredients are added for the dough. Due to the increased water absorption of the scald, the bread is said to keep longer fresh. I would like to know whether… (a) …the scald helps keeping the bread longer fresh, (b) …different ratios have any effect on the outcome of the bread or the freshness, (c) …adding salt in the scald has any effect (some say adding the salt for the whole dough prevents enzymatic degradation), (d) …the amount of flour of the scald affects the result. Often only a small amount of wholemeal flour is used, e.g. 100g flour mixed with water for a 1kg loaf of bread. What are the result if the amount is increased? That could make a whole series :)
Absolutely love your work and dedication, my hat off to you bro, your doing the experiments without me having to waste ingredients especially useful in these times of lockdown and Coronavirus. Don’t belittle yourself with the geek title. No you’re a pioneer! Xx
Hello Sune!! I love that you record the whole process!! It's really helpful for beginners like myself. I have one question: why is no kneading necessary? I have baked before without kneading the dough (just mixing it and doing sets of S&F), but I don't know why it works.
I’m so glad I found this page. I’m currently in the process of waiting for my sourdough dough to proof (I used wheat flour, bread flour, and all purpose in my dough, all from my general grocery store) and felt a bit nervous about my end result... u got a new subscriber today!
Thank you Sune. This was extremely helpful. I have been struggling a bit using recipes for sourdough i found online. My doughs have been turning out very sticky and moist compared to what I seen in your videos and others. For a beginner a very sticky dough is not easy to handle. In Norway we basically only have all purpose flour. There's nothing called bread flour, or cake flour for that matter. I have found a specialty store nearby though and will test with some organic super flour next time I bake to see if it makes any difference. Thanks for another great video. Keep up the good work!
I just took the formula used in this video, that's linked in the description, and with the help of your Bread Calculator I lowered the hydration just a bit to make it easier for me to handle, since my last 3 bakes have been a flop. I also took the time to add the baking instructions in the Notes section, and then printed my own custom recipe based on this AP Flour Recipe you made. Your Bread Calculator is awesome! I hope I'm able to get this to work for me this time around. I'm using Hecker's AP Unbleached Flour which is a flour made in New York USA (the only one I could find in two weeks of searching for flour). Turns out this AP Flour has 11.5 to 11.9 % protein content which is higher than most AP Flours. So maybe your original hydration will work after all. We'll see how I do. I've tried several methods to bake sourdough and yours is the only one I truly understand, only because you've taken the time to explain why things work the way they do and what happens when you change one variable or another. Thank you for all your hard work on your channel!
@@Foodgeek Thank you! I'm determined to get there and watching your videos is helping. Once the flour shortage improves I'll be more willing to try higher hydration and improve my skills and not worry about a bad bake 😁 Thanks for the reply and your awesome videos!
Thank you so much for this! All sourdough bread videos use specialty flour and its not as readily available for me. I’ve been googling this, searching RUclips and nothing! Your video came in my suggestions after days of research and it was just what I needed!
Hi As a fellow dane living in New Zealand I can assure you that different ingredients make different bread. First off, danish supermarket flour is of quite high standard even the AP stuff. Here in Auckland, organic flour can only be found in special shops and with the lockdown it's not readily accessible. More interestingly, the small amount of chlorine in the water here, has killed my sourdough mother more than once. Have now changed to bottled spring water and we are back. So yes, you can make great bread from most flours, but there are some getting used to....
I use a 13% protein "Strong Flour" from Korea. It works fine for most breads. The good thing about it is it's quite cheap, but the quality is actually very good.
Hi Sune, been watching your videos. I'm addicted! Love your style and technique. I'm a sour dough baker myself so it is great to see many of my own questions answered in your vids. Keep 'em coming. Your friend here in California, USA.
Thanks, Sune. This was really helpful. I was thrilled to know your AP flour had only 10%. I believe that a longer autolyse helps a lot. But I also know that the final result is not the same for all AP flours, despite the same amount of protein. After lots of trial and error, I found that organic AP flours usually give the best results. 😊
Your videos on bread making are skillful and easy to follow. You give great instruction. Like the mad scientist you are, the experiments are well executed.
I just found your channel and am going through all of your old videos. All of the other you-tubers making sourdough do things differently and insist their way is the best, which of course led to a number of questions. YOU answer those questions! I was using stone milled flour until recently when I had to switch to store-bought bread flour. The dough was extremely loose and harder to shape. After the second round I thought "I don't think it's me; I think it's the flour". Then I came across this video and my thoughts were confirmed! I also have MS, so spending a lot of time in the kitchen is hard for me. Your vids have shown me that I can use my stand mixer to knead the dough then I can just leave it for a few hours and do other things. I also don't have keep my starter out and constantly feed it, which is EXPENSIVE. I keep about 150g of starter in the fridge. When I am going to bake, I feed it with just the amount of flour/water I will need for my loaves. Little to no discards :)
Thanks, now I know why I use so much less water than you do. I buy the Harina de Trigo at the market here in Mexico. It seems different from american AP flour. My bread is great. (With the tips I got from you and others.) I mix with a stand mixer for mixing before and after autolease, after that I do book folds at 30 minute intervals for six times. After shaping and resting the dough goes into the fridge for 12 hours. My kitchen is set back in the bed rock and is always between 68 and 71 degrees all year around with no heating or cooling in the house. I use an old fashioned gas oven with a cast iron dutchoven. I am also at at over 2000 meters in altitude. What I have learned is that if you don't have the perfect RUclips ingredients and situation, you just need to experiment and adjust.
I like your videos and really appreciate the experiments. I've been making bread for years but never sourdough. Now I am trying it. First batch, great oven spring, but when cut the bread had huge holes in the top half and the bottom part was very solid, almost no bubbles at all. Baked on baking tiles. Consistency was good and the bread was edible, but not at all uniform in the final baked density. AP flour, strong starter, and using your easy sourdough recipe. I did use a steam pan in the bottom of the oven and wondered if that could have cooled down the baking stones. Cheers.
Thanks for this great video. There are so many RUclips videos about hydration, but they never relate it to the type/quality of the flour. The big mistake that most baker-youtubers make is talking too much about numbers (%, weights) when they should be talking more about visual characteristic and textures.
This video series really proves that having fancy ingredients and being a chemist about ratios is not required to make tasty sourdough bread. As long as you have the skills to work with the dough and know when its ready for each stage, sourdough bread is easy to make and accessible for everyone.
Hello there and thank you for teaching me how to make so many types. Of wonderful bread. One question, What size and brand are the square containers you use during the bulk rise. Thanks so much.
Hi there! I am from Honduras! Very far away from you but I’ve always wanted to make sourdough bread but I thought I couldn’t with all purpose flour because that’s the only one I can get in here! Thank you so much! I’ll start my starter today 🤗
My first ever sour dough loaf was already final shaped & in fridge when I saw this video. AP flour from supermarket 72% hydration. Too late to change. I did bake it this morning in a loaf pan rather than my originally planned free form boule. It tastes good, but it's more moist than standard. Now I'm eager to try 60-65%. Also plan to buy bread flour.
So helpful right now, given the shortage of bread flour all over, thank you! I will crack on, using my AP flour with confidence in the quest of making yummy sourdough!
yes, it's the only flour i can find where i live, it has 10% of protein, and use 60% 65% of hydration. sometimes a mix it with whole flour can push it to 73% hydration.
@@rodrigorojasavila3439 I love the Yucatan! I first went there with my wife back in the early 1980s and we loved Chicken Pibil. I also loved the conch and I think another one was turtle, tortuga steaks. Once all this BS about this virus is over and there is anything left of the world economy, I want to return to the Yucatan. Good luck with your baking!!!!!!
I use all purpose a fair bit, it's what we use for the standard white bread at work. I only use different flour if I'm doing spelt or wholemeal, something along those lines.
Hi Sune, love your channel! Great content as always! Just wanted to mention that what is called "all-purpose" versus "bread" flour in different countries varies widely. You mentioned that all-purpose in Denmark is around 10.5%, and that bread flour is around 12.5%. In Canada (where I live), commercial all-purpose is anywhere between around 12-13% depending on the brand, whereas commercial bread flour is always more than 14% (really meant for loafpan sandwich bread). So in Canada, all-purpose is actually the sweet spot for sourdough! My understanding is that it's a similar situation in the US, but shifted down a bit. May I suggest talking in approximate percentages in future videos instead? This might clear up some confusion for people in some countries. Keep up the great work! I learn something new every time!
What I would like to see is an experiment for how much whole wheat you can use before it starting to seriously affect oven spring, density of the crumb etc. That should ofc include one bread with 100% whole wheat too. Whole wheat is healthier and tastes better but somewhat more difficult to work with. Hope you can prove me wrong!
I think you should add another test: a CRUNCH and CRACKLE TEST of the crust to satisfy the ASMR needs of your salivating audience! Also, it would be nice to hear your guitar playing some time. Such beautiful guitars. Thank you Sune for a much needed comparison experiment. Home isolation in the time of COVID19 has made us all amateur bakers, evidenced by the absence of ALL flours, rye, bread even all purpose flour at the market. Last time only a lonely bag of cornmeal was left. Lucky we were already well stocked with bread and all purpose flour. Though after a month, we are starting run low now. (BTW, I am a scientist, so I very much appreciate your carefully controlled experiments! Kudo's)
When my wife and I did the flour tests at sourdoughhome.com she did the taste testing without knowing which flour was being used. All too often, taste tests can deliver the results you expect, not knowing what you are tasting removes any tendency towards an unconscious, or even conscious, bias. Several times I was surprised that a favored flour didn't deliver the results I was expecting in the breads.
I have had some successes, but a lot of failures. The last 'loaf" I made, was mostly crust and hollow. I'm not sure what I did but I'm pretty discouraged. Thanks for the videos.
Hey Sune! My compliments, absolutely fantastic videos! If you are looking for other experiments, I was always wondering how much the autolyse contributes to the bread. Another thing: Couple of years age, at a fine dining restaurant, I ate a sourdough bread, with a starter made out of apple peels or apples. It would be amazing if you would give it a shot.
I usually use 2/3 bread flour, 1/3 whole grain flour, but in my experience, AP flour works fine, too. Sure, it may have a little less chew, a little less lift, but still makes darned good bread. If AP is all I happen to have on hand when I feel inspired to bake, it's certainly not going to stop me from making some fresh, delicious bread! I look forward to seeing your results.
I live in Germany and the flours are named differently here. Since i watch virtually everything in english i didn't bother to look up the different flour types, because i thought only the ash content and amount of bran in the flour would change, so i bought the most readily available flour: pastry flour (T405). Coming from 100% spelt flour this was still a huge improvement, especially to the stability of the raw dough after proofing. After reading your comment i will have to try out the correct flour type (AP is T550 and bread flour T812, high gluten would be T1050), so thanks for your comment and thanks Sune for the (yet to be released) video on the topic.
@@MrHardstylegamer We are scrued from the start mate, our countries got diferent naming of flower and no one explain it ... becouse 99% of blogers and youtubers do it in english. So in course of baking this topic was explained. Its all about protein in the flower, temperature of water/dough, water and yeast. Diferent countries do diferent types so you cant get same results whit similar products. For an example my country rye flower is not even close to germans. One type of flower take much more water than outher even when they are the same type(Т) becouse they are diferent grade, sort of plant and even supplements.
Also, I'm lucky enough to live near a large artisnal bakery. They sell a awesome boule at the local stores for $5. At some point it ain't worth paying a premium for good flour.
Quite a few sources, like Ken Forkish's Flour Water Salt Yeast do not recommend using bread flour at ALL. 10-11% AP flour is the recommendation there. But AP flour is not standardized, some brands drop as low as 8-9% in the US.
Sune, great vid as always. 2 questions that came up probably both basic... what are you frequently pinching off as you are shaping? also in your other vid, it seems the coil fold was the winning technique overall, do you favor it in some instances over others? Or just when you feel like that's what you want to do? I've seen you use different fold techniques in diff experiments. Thanks!
I love your video presentation and what your doing. I’m making my first breads based on your instructions. In the past I’ve been able to get tangy flavor OR good oven spring. Never both. I’m at the bulk fermentation step and my dough is very taught and doesn’t really stretch. After 4 stretch and folds I’m not even close to window pane. My levain doubled in about 2 hours so I think my starter is active. Also the dough is very shaggy still, not smoothing at all. I’m sure by the time you see this, if you do, my bread will be long done so I’m commenting for others who might have the same issue. Also, I want to support what your doing, but a lot of your affiliate links are dead. I’ll wait a bit before I make purchases!
It sounds like you make have a very low hydration? What is it? About the links: by dead do you mean sold out? And for me to find out if they're dead, I need to know what country you are in :)
Foodgeek Hi. I followed the beginner sourdough recipe exactly, so maybe my flour is a thirsty one? I used King Arthur bread flour and Bobs Mill whole wheat flour. I’m in the US and the links said “no longer available” so I think not just sold out. In particular the baking steel and peel. Thanks for taking time.
Foodgeek for an update, after 9 stretch and folds I was still not getting the feel I’m used to. Very stiff and just couldn’t pull a window pane as well as I’m used to. I baked the bread and actually got a medium oven spring. I’ll cut into it tomorrow and discover the crumb and flavor. While baking it was not announcing a lot of tang with the smell. I really appreciate all the experimenting you do because now I feel I now what to do to make the dough slacker or increase the tang. One variable at a time! Thanks.
@@pilldoktor How to get more tang? I had the same problem, flat loaves with great flavor... Now I get decent spring with no flavor... I am still beginner So I hope I figure it out. I have to use a stand mixer and never know if i am over or under kneading yet, but I always get shaggy dough no matter if I run the machine short or long. So many things can make a difference. This time I scored deeper than ever, the loaf is in the oven and has the best spring I got thus far. Seems I have to knead longer and score deeper... reminds me of something else... If I get stronger dough then I could ferment longer? isnt that how the "tang" comes from, longer ferment??
No matter what I do, I can’t get good gluten development here. Sometimes it’s better than others, but I can’t ever get a good windowpane test as you demonstrate. I’m making a sandwich bread with honey and butter, in addition to the standard flour, water, salt, and yeast. It makes a decent loaf, tastes good, sometimes a little crumbly, usually with good enough structure to spread with stuff and to make sandwiches, but I’m quite envious of your good gluten development. I’m usually using a hand ground whole wheat or store bought whole wheat in combination with a regular atta or moida. I think atta is more like all purpose flour and moida is more like pastry flour, so I only use the moida if I don’t have atta. Any thoughts as to why the gluten won’t develop? I’ve tried the stretch and fold. I’ve tried the 300 kneads method. I don’t have access to any high protein bread flour, so that option is out.
Hi, in my limited experience, honey, butter, oil, fat, any other additive will soften the gluten and make it more difficult to get good structure. If on top of that you use low-protein flour, it's not surprising you're having problems. I'd suggest that you limit yourself to flour, water, salt and the starter before you start adding additional components to the mix.
Question - I checked your channel to see if you had anything on using whey instead of water in sourdough bread. I just made ricotta cheese, ohhh it’s heaven on fresh made sourdough and wondered about using the whey in place of some of the water. Since it’s acid I was concerned it may kill the starter. What do you think? THANKS! Love your channel.
Hi Foodgeek! Always enjoy your videos. I have a question: My starter is always feed on AP flour and it's very active and established. I make bread with it. But I'm not sure if, when making my levain (I never use straight up starter), I should feed it with whatever the flour is that will go in my sourdough (mostly bread flour) or the same AP flour? Could you clarify? Also...have you ever tested the Tartine method against the regular method you use? If so, what was the result, and if not, do you have an opinion on it? I TRULY appreciate your reply, as I've asked a couple of cooks but received no answer. Stay healthy!!:)
After watching so many of your videos, I'm always surprised at this point that there isn't a permanent pre-shaping, bench-scraper shaped, half-circle track ground into your countertop. So. Many. Loaves..... ;) Awesome videos, my friend!
I'm so glad I found this channel. One quick question, in Germany (where I currently live) there's no such a thing as "bread flour", they have many categories, and I'm still trying them out, which is usually tricky as you need to find the correct hydration for each one. Have you ever worked with german flours? Any suggestion?
I use organic flour from the supermarket all the time (I think it's something regional, or at least only from the next state over). I use AP (or 550 as we call it in Germany) when I want a particularly lighter bread and milder taste compared to 1050 or whole. But they all work for sourdough bread. The real distinction is that you shouldn't try to sustain your starter. That deserves whole grain flour!
There are absolutely no sourdough experiments on youtube including regular all purpose, supermarket 10% protein wheat flour. Except for now!!! Much thanks!!! Everyone, in their recipes, tend to use the highest quality bread flour automatically. And even when they do use so called all purpose, they are still using brands that have at least 11.7% like KAF. This experiment needed to be done. It dispels the myth that all purpose low protein flour can never be used for sourdough bread. You proved that, indeed, it can be done. One just has to use the correct technique. Kudos!!!
I know! People are making sourdough so freaking elite, but not everyone has access to the organic highend stuff. Or they want to save money. And if starters were all we had for thousands of years before baker's yeast, why wouldn't it work with AP flour? My starter is all AP.
@@brokenglassshimmerlikestar3407 is it ok to use AP when making the starter?
@@alicad2190 My starter is all AP and it's doing great.
Its almost as if you didnt need this experiment at all, right? Ive been baking sourdough bread with AP, or 550 in Europe, for years now, with no problems whatsoever. And Ill continue to do so. Sourdough bread is older than high gluten flour by a few thousands of years. You dont need a fancy technique or anything, just make it as you would with that kryptonite flour that is only available in USA. Wether it turns out the same or not I wouldn't really know, what I know is that it turns out extremely delicious and looking like any bread Ive seen online.
Technique and ones ability to make a decent loaf is at least 3x more important than the type of white flour you use.
@@Qlicky The thing I wonder is how different AP is from what was/is produced simply by milling the grain. The flours I get all list a few more ingredients (added nutrients, mostly, probably).
“Regular run of the mill flour”. 😂 All flour is run of the mill.
olivepressdesign I like you
😂🤣
olivepressdesign Thanks for the laugh Olivepress, I kneaded that !
You could say lately that there's been a run *ON* the mills!
I've been watching Bob's red mill's website, and they have been out of stock of everything for weeks. Luckily, my local Bi-Mart store was still stocked with Bob's AP and whole wheat, probably because their headquarters are both in Oregon. Just got a few more cases this weekend!
Don't mind me, just making personal notes for AP flour bread bc i'm running low on flours.
1:55 Formulation
2:32 Autolyse (1 hr)
3:26 Starter (30 mins) Then Bulk Fermentation
4:28 Second stretch and fold
5:58 3rd stretch, Window pane test, ferment at 30°C. Let rise for +50% volume
12:42 Pre-shape and ball, Bench Rest, and Final Shape
16:47 Score and Bake at 260 ° C
17:44 Final Product
oh my, my personal notes got noticed by the man himself. My entire week is made 😅♥️
If I’ve learned anything from watching these experiments you run, it’s that with enough skill any thing makes delicious bread. Cheap flour, expensive flour, coil folds, one hand folds, autolyse before or after salt... no matter what your bread is amazing.
Spot on. Anything can be made tasty when you know how to work with it.
You are the MAN! Every time I have a question and search RUclips, you have done an experiment on it. From the bread proofing box, to the cast iron bakers, and beyond. Thanks so much! Your videos are well produced, leaving no questions to your processes and my sourdough obsession results continue to improve. Incredibly helpful - just, . . wow.
Finally! I always say if you have flour, water salt and yeast/sourdough you can make bread/pizza. People think by using the most expensive high tech flour, they will produce good bread. I had so many conversations where people told me to try Manitoba flour and what not because it will make my pizza even greater but I get great results even with standard flour. Sure, there are some differences in hydration but that's the part where you need skill. Skill is what makes bread or pizza great. Thank you so much for this test! Great channel btw. and greetings to you, my neighbor, from Germany :)
One problem with using non organic flour is that the wheat fields in the U.S. have been treated with "Roundup" which gets into your wheat and thus your flour and finally your body. This is not the case in Europe. My mother always said buying quality food is still cheaper in the end than doctor bills. She was right. God bless her but she lived into her 90's and her father to 100. She sure knew what she was talking about.
I agree but i have to say good flour from a local mill can give you a better taste of a bread. For me and i´m also living in Germany, i have to say, i get my flour from a local mill to support the local companys and have also a better taste :)
Absolutely. In my opinion, too many people fuss and obsess over exactly this ratio or that amount of time or this kind of flour or this piece of kitchenware to the point where it's an obstacle to enjoyment. Those things can make a little bit of a difference, but really, bread making is pretty simple. With a little practice you can make almost any wheat flour, salt, yeast, and water into something absolutely delicious. I'm not belittling Sune and his explorations, it's always fun to explore and test variations, but I think the cult of bread making over the last few years is scaring off a lot of people by making it seem much harder than it really is.
Are you aware that the protein % can be very different?
I totally agree!!!
I think another interesting version of this experiment would be to use what you consider to be optimal hydration for each flour. That takes more work to find those levels, but, as you imply, it is not quite fair to the specialty bread flour to use the same hydration level as the other flours. You'd probably find that the specialty bread flour performs even better than the others.
I know it does. The last many of my baking experiments use this flour. It's perfect at 80-85% 😊
Yeah, I was wondering what a direct comparison of the three flours with the same relative hydration, rather than absolute as in the video, would look like! Fascinating experiment as usual, Sune. Thank you so much for sharing with the world.
Excellent video! My grandmother taught me how to make sourdough bread when I was young. Her starter was over 100-years old. Unfortunately, I was never able to keep her starter alive outside of the isolated canyon where she lived and had tried everything different waters, flours and temperatures. As strange as it may seem, it appeared to be a unique strain indigenous to the canyon. She made bread, in a huge enamel tub, for the whole town and her pancakes were famous for those traveling through. Today, with the virus, you deal with the flour that's available. About 6 months ago, my old standby Gold Medal wheat flour disappeared from the shelves and was forced to order 10-pounds online, and the dark rye isn't available the last I looked online. Thinking about making some sourdough Naan bread for Easter Sunday. Thanks much for the video.🥞🧇🥨🥖🍕
不懂你说啥
I usually use 85% unbleached bread and 15% whole wheat with a 65% hydration. I like the taste and color the ww adds. I use a modified technique combining some steps from Foodgeek, Bake with Jack and Tartine/Chad Robertson. All good. Love your experiments that usually debunk some 'truths' we mostly all accept without question. Keep the vids coming.
Yes, the best tip is: "you can keep the starter at room temperature". That makes it so much easier.
@@usafan96soren20 How long can you keep it at room temperature without feeding it? Would a couple of days kill it? Thanks!
@@gabea.2123 Absolutely not, the longest I've gone is almost two weeks.
@@usafan96soren20 Great to know, thanks! Sometimes I won't bake for a few days, less than a week, but hesitate whether to put it in the fridge or not.
Manuel Marzolla it depends on the environment. I just lost my sourdough starter as the temperature started to climb here in Bangladesh. It’s also really humid here. It got mold. I also hadn’t fed it for about four days, so I don’t know if that made a difference or not. Thankfully I had some store bought yeast until I could decide if I wanted to try to restart my starter. I miss the flavor, so I going to, but will clean out its old spac in the fridge for it. I would recommend for a warmer, more humid climate to either feed it daily, or to keep in the fridge. But that’s just one observation from one environment, not a general recommendation.
Thank you for experimenting and showing the results, made me learn and feel better after couple of failures with oven spring.
You've provided a CALCULATOR to measure the ingredients in your formulas page and I LOVE you for that!! Just spent an hour trying to find exact amounts to use for a little bit of sourdough starter, all purpose flour, and water which is all I have and there you are; you cut the chase for me and really educated me on how the ratios work and how to calculate the exact amounts. Cannot THANK YOU you enough. I will definitely purchase merchandise to support your site after I make the bread.
Also, I'm feeding my starter nothing but el-cheapo supermarket flour. $2 for 5lb around my parts (Northeast US). Makes me 4 boules and feeds my started for a week. These days I'm working from home so I can feed it 2~3x/day. 10g starter, 10g el-cheapo flour, 10g water each time. Eats voraciously and easily triples.
Thank you for the lack of useless talking. I liked the real and direct action.
Thank you for this. I found this video incredibly helpful, especially since I have a lot of AP flour to go through. Your pre-shaping / shaping chops memorized me into thinking I could do it just as easily on the first go. Guess what? I couldn't. BUT I'm glad to have a great visual guide for reference and will keep practicing this technique.
It's a process. If you go look at my videos from a year ago I've learned a lot :)
I love your comparison vids, because they demonstrate that life is more a matter of technic than material. Keep up your good work.
Hey man, If I was in Denmark with all that sourdough, you would see a kilo of soft danish butter next to that crumb.
Your stretching and shaping using a dough scraper is excellent, you make it look so easy
Today I baked a basic blond boule with Gold Medal bleached enriched all purpose flour so common in US supermarkets (~10.5% protein). It took 6 coil folds until it passed the window pane test. The resulting boule did not get a great oven spring. Still better than any supermarket bread, but I would say ~2/3 the normal oven spring I get with the unbleached AP flour. So it seems that one can only push this so far and there is a point where flour does matter. That said, the Gold Medal bleached AP is not any cheaper than the unbleached AP flour so for bread baking, there's no reason to buy it.
I've been making all my quarantine bread with all purpose flour, jim lahey's no knead bread recipe, and a "sourdough starter" that began as a piece of bread dough made with commercial yeast that I added homemade yogurt to.
All yeast is, is a culture, if you let it age it gets stronger, it becomes more resistant to the acidic and alcoholic environment it creates from its waste products, if you put it in flour it will eat through the flour and reproduce through the whole thing, and you can save a piece of dough to use as your new starter.
If you've got time and planning you can make a bread loaf with literally maybe 10 minutes of active work, and no special equipment.
I’d like to know more about this, it sounds so interesting
Man ,honestly the content you produce is indispensable and precious! Thank you.
How does this not glue to your hand? The stuff I made sticks like the absolute hell³. Touching it like you do is completely impossible. Even cleaning my hands was an immense effort.
When I first started out, I felt just like you. After having baked a lot of sourdough it seems easy 😊
It’s all I ever use and works out perfectly to my liking
it's nice to see you struggling with the supermarket AP flour. I feel validated with how frustrating my experiences and how gooey and sticky it gets with 80% hydration, and that I'm not the only one.
Thanks for the tips on flour types, but also on your stretch and fold, and shaping technique. I appreciate your experiments. Thanks!
Been using only all purpose because it is recommended in Flour Water Salt Yeast. Its my first bread book and the breads came out great. Definitely going to explore other flours and books.
This is a great channel - I really appreciate all the time and effort you are putting into it with the sourdough experimentation, you are trying all of the different things I would love to try if I only had the time! I think you are also going a long way in taking a lot of the fear of sourdough baking out of the equation for new home bakers as well - great job!
Did you notice any difference in the 'chewiness' of the different breads? As others have mentioned, with the current difficulty in getting any flour, I'm stuck using AP flour. I add ~1 tablespoon 'vital wheat gluten' flour (70-80% protein) for each 1 cup of AP flour to add chewiness to the dough. Seems to work well! Another suggestion for you, I use cheap plastic shower caps to cover the bannetons in the fridge: they are reusable and look so cute!
The ap-bread had the softest crumb, but only by a hair :)
HI Jill. Could you please tell me where you get the cheapy shower caps from? I'm considering having to buy proper ones. lmao
@@totalspoon I got them from Amazon. I still have two that I collected from hotel rooms. They work well as bowl covers for potlucks, etc. Not that we can go to potlucks anymore. :-( www.amazon.com/gp/product/B071P3D7SH/
Just been gifted 10kg organic AP flour so going to use it up before buying my normal bread flour again. This was very helpful thank you.
Hi Sune, I really like your experiments because they debunk the myths of baking bread. Thanks for all the effort you put in!
Are you looking for a new experiment? I have a suggestion:
Some bakers in Switzerland, Germany and maybe other countries use a so called scald when using wholemeal for a sourdough bread. They mix wholemeal flour with boiling water in a ratio 3:4 or 1:2. After cooling down, the scald is put overnight in the fridge. On the following day all the other ingredients are added for the dough. Due to the increased water absorption of the scald, the bread is said to keep longer fresh.
I would like to know whether…
(a) …the scald helps keeping the bread longer fresh,
(b) …different ratios have any effect on the outcome of the bread or the freshness,
(c) …adding salt in the scald has any effect (some say adding the salt for the whole dough prevents enzymatic degradation),
(d) …the amount of flour of the scald affects the result. Often only a small amount of wholemeal flour is used, e.g. 100g flour mixed with water for a 1kg loaf of bread. What are the result if the amount is increased?
That could make a whole series :)
Marian Sand
That’s also called a Tangzhong or water roux. You cook part of the flour in liquid to a paste and it does extends the shelf, as you said
Thank you for geeking out for us for this video. Bread flour is quite hard to get at the moment and this really puts my mind at ease.
I’m loving your channel mate, much appreciation from Australia 🇦🇺
Thank you ❤️
Jesus H Christ yeah I know, he drinks at my local on Sunday’s , weird sense of humour though, must get that from his dad.
@@darrencorbett9883 yeah if you see him again he owes me money, I need to catch up.
You should play some original music on one of those guitars for audio over the tasting portion of the video 😁 That would be super cool.
Great idea 😁🎸
I was thinking the same thing when i "discovered" this channel yesterday!
Looking forward to seeing AND hearing your next creation!
👍🏻🌾🌾🌾🌾🎶🎶🎶🍞🍞🤪
@@intelligentcomputing you'll be soon addicted, these bread recipes are so so good.
@@Foodgeek Please no music !!!! There are enough video music with music ! I just want to hear the sound of the brad !
I know those are not for decoration behind you 🙂
Absolutely love your work and dedication, my hat off to you bro, your doing the experiments without me having to waste ingredients especially useful in these times of lockdown and Coronavirus.
Don’t belittle yourself with the geek title. No you’re a pioneer! Xx
Hello Sune!!
I love that you record the whole process!! It's really helpful for beginners like myself.
I have one question: why is no kneading necessary? I have baked before without kneading the dough (just mixing it and doing sets of S&F), but I don't know why it works.
When it comes to sourdough kneading is replaced with time.
It's because of hydration and time. This is not possible with stiffer doughs or shorter rise times, which is perfect for sourdough.
I’m so glad I found this page. I’m currently in the process of waiting for my sourdough dough to proof (I used wheat flour, bread flour, and all purpose in my dough, all from my general grocery store) and felt a bit nervous about my end result... u got a new subscriber today!
Best of luck to you ❤️
Thank you Sune. This was extremely helpful. I have been struggling a bit using recipes for sourdough i found online. My doughs have been turning out very sticky and moist compared to what I seen in your videos and others. For a beginner a very sticky dough is not easy to handle.
In Norway we basically only have all purpose flour. There's nothing called bread flour, or cake flour for that matter. I have found a specialty store nearby though and will test with some organic super flour next time I bake to see if it makes any difference.
Thanks for another great video. Keep up the good work!
I just took the formula used in this video, that's linked in the description, and with the help of your Bread Calculator I lowered the hydration just a bit to make it easier for me to handle, since my last 3 bakes have been a flop. I also took the time to add the baking instructions in the Notes section, and then printed my own custom recipe based on this AP Flour Recipe you made. Your Bread Calculator is awesome! I hope I'm able to get this to work for me this time around. I'm using Hecker's AP Unbleached Flour which is a flour made in New York USA (the only one I could find in two weeks of searching for flour). Turns out this AP Flour has 11.5 to 11.9 % protein content which is higher than most AP Flours. So maybe your original hydration will work after all. We'll see how I do. I've tried several methods to bake sourdough and yours is the only one I truly understand, only because you've taken the time to explain why things work the way they do and what happens when you change one variable or another. Thank you for all your hard work on your channel!
It may work, but high hydration is part flour, part skills, so you need to work your way up :) Good luck :D
@@Foodgeek Thank you! I'm determined to get there and watching your videos is helping. Once the flour shortage improves I'll be more willing to try higher hydration and improve my skills and not worry about a bad bake 😁 Thanks for the reply and your awesome videos!
Thank you so much for this! All sourdough bread videos use specialty flour and its not as readily available for me. I’ve been googling this, searching RUclips and nothing! Your video came in my suggestions after days of research and it was just what I needed!
Hej Sune! Superbra experiment! Motbevisar alla geeks som bara komplicerar med att trycka in saltet efter autolysen, etc! !00 tack från Stockholm!
Hi
As a fellow dane living in New Zealand I can assure you that different ingredients make different bread.
First off, danish supermarket flour is of quite high standard even the AP stuff.
Here in Auckland, organic flour can only be found in special shops and with the lockdown it's not readily accessible.
More interestingly, the small amount of chlorine in the water here, has killed my sourdough mother more than once. Have now changed to bottled spring water and we are back.
So yes, you can make great bread from most flours, but there are some getting used to....
I use a 13% protein "Strong Flour" from Korea. It works fine for most breads. The good thing about it is it's quite cheap, but the quality is actually very good.
Can you share the name of that flour please?
Hi Sune, been watching your videos. I'm addicted! Love your style and technique. I'm a sour dough baker myself so it is great to see many of my own questions answered in your vids. Keep 'em coming. Your friend here in California, USA.
Thanks, Sune. This was really helpful. I was thrilled to know your AP flour had only 10%. I believe that a longer autolyse helps a lot. But I also know that the final result is not the same for all AP flours, despite the same amount of protein. After lots of trial and error, I found that organic AP flours usually give the best results. 😊
Your videos on bread making are skillful and easy to follow. You give great instruction. Like the mad scientist you are, the experiments are well executed.
I just found your channel and am going through all of your old videos. All of the other you-tubers making sourdough do things differently and insist their way is the best, which of course led to a number of questions. YOU answer those questions! I was using stone milled flour until recently when I had to switch to store-bought bread flour. The dough was extremely loose and harder to shape. After the second round I thought "I don't think it's me; I think it's the flour". Then I came across this video and my thoughts were confirmed!
I also have MS, so spending a lot of time in the kitchen is hard for me. Your vids have shown me that I can use my stand mixer to knead the dough then I can just leave it for a few hours and do other things. I also don't have keep my starter out and constantly feed it, which is EXPENSIVE. I keep about 150g of starter in the fridge. When I am going to bake, I feed it with just the amount of flour/water I will need for my loaves. Little to no discards :)
Thanks, now I know why I use so much less water than you do. I buy the Harina de Trigo at the market here in Mexico. It seems different from american AP flour. My bread is great. (With the tips I got from you and others.) I mix with a stand mixer for mixing before and after autolease, after that I do book folds at 30 minute intervals for six times. After shaping and resting the dough goes into the fridge for 12 hours. My kitchen is set back in the bed rock and is always between 68 and 71 degrees all year around with no heating or cooling in the house. I use an old fashioned gas oven with a cast iron dutchoven. I am also at at over 2000 meters in altitude. What I have learned is that if you don't have the perfect RUclips ingredients and situation, you just need to experiment and adjust.
I like your videos and really appreciate the experiments. I've been making bread for years but never sourdough. Now I am trying it. First batch, great oven spring, but when cut the bread had huge holes in the top half and the bottom part was very solid, almost no bubbles at all. Baked on baking tiles. Consistency was good and the bread was edible, but not at all uniform in the final baked density. AP flour, strong starter, and using your easy sourdough recipe. I did use a steam pan in the bottom of the oven and wondered if that could have cooled down the baking stones. Cheers.
Thanks for this great video. There are so many RUclips videos about hydration, but they never relate it to the type/quality of the flour. The big mistake that most baker-youtubers make is talking too much about numbers (%, weights) when they should be talking more about visual characteristic and textures.
I really appreciate the time, money, and effort you put into this video. Great information.
Love the bench scraper !!!
Great video! I could watch you shape dough for hours. What a great talent you have.
The results were a bit surprising to me. I won't be hesitating to the all purpose flour if that is all that is available. Good experiment. Thanks.
This video series really proves that having fancy ingredients and being a chemist about ratios is not required to make tasty sourdough bread. As long as you have the skills to work with the dough and know when its ready for each stage, sourdough bread is easy to make and accessible for everyone.
Hello there and thank you for teaching me how to make so many types. Of wonderful bread. One question, What size and brand are the square containers you use during the bulk rise. Thanks so much.
Hi there! I am from Honduras! Very far away from you but I’ve always wanted to make sourdough bread but I thought I couldn’t with all purpose flour because that’s the only one I can get in here! Thank you so much! I’ll start my starter today 🤗
Dude, love your videos so much. You really helped answer a lot of my questions and it's just so enjoyable to watch. Thanks from New Jersey
This is mesmerizing. I cannot look away.
Brilliant video. Couldn’t come at a better time, as I’m getting back into making sourdough. Thanks for putting this together for us ☺️🌱
My first ever sour dough loaf was already final shaped & in fridge when I saw this video. AP flour from supermarket 72% hydration. Too late to change. I did bake it this morning in a loaf pan rather than my originally planned free form boule. It tastes good, but it's more moist than standard. Now I'm eager to try 60-65%. Also plan to buy bread flour.
I appreciate you going outside of your comfort zone to do these experiments. Quick question, what is the pinching you sometimes do during shaping?
He's popping bubbles in the dough so they don't bake into larger bubbles under a crust
So helpful right now, given the shortage of bread flour all over, thank you! I will crack on, using my AP flour with confidence in the quest of making yummy sourdough!
love your films, your experiments and attitude.
yes, it's the only flour i can find where i live, it has 10% of protein, and use 60% 65% of hydration. sometimes a mix it with whole flour can push it to 73% hydration.
Where do you live Rodrigo?
@@DANVIIL Yucatán, México.
@@rodrigorojasavila3439 I love the Yucatan! I first went there with my wife back in the early 1980s and we loved Chicken Pibil. I also loved the conch and I think another one was turtle, tortuga steaks. Once all this BS about this virus is over and there is anything left of the world economy, I want to return to the Yucatan. Good luck with your baking!!!!!!
@@DANVIIL Pibil is very good, I haven't try turtle has been ilegal for 10 years now, good you had the chance
I use all purpose a fair bit, it's what we use for the standard white bread at work. I only use different flour if I'm doing spelt or wholemeal, something along those lines.
Great video, thanks for the experiment, I usually bake with all-purpose flour, I guess I'll continue with the same.
Hi Sune, love your channel! Great content as always!
Just wanted to mention that what is called "all-purpose" versus "bread" flour in different countries varies widely. You mentioned that all-purpose in Denmark is around 10.5%, and that bread flour is around 12.5%. In Canada (where I live), commercial all-purpose is anywhere between around 12-13% depending on the brand, whereas commercial bread flour is always more than 14% (really meant for loafpan sandwich bread). So in Canada, all-purpose is actually the sweet spot for sourdough! My understanding is that it's a similar situation in the US, but shifted down a bit.
May I suggest talking in approximate percentages in future videos instead? This might clear up some confusion for people in some countries.
Keep up the great work! I learn something new every time!
This is a GREAT experiment thanks
Nice video, well explained thank you . From Singapore.
Glad you enjoyed it!
What I would like to see is an experiment for how much whole wheat you can use before it starting to seriously affect oven spring, density of the crumb etc. That should ofc include one bread with 100% whole wheat too. Whole wheat is healthier and tastes better but somewhat more difficult to work with. Hope you can prove me wrong!
Eivind Biering-Strand good idea 👍
I have one planned for next Saturday with 20%, 40% and 60% 😊
Great experiment.
I could not find any bread flour anywhere. I will just use all purpose. Thanks!
I think you should add another test: a CRUNCH and CRACKLE TEST of the crust to satisfy the ASMR needs of your salivating audience!
Also, it would be nice to hear your guitar playing some time. Such beautiful guitars.
Thank you Sune for a much needed comparison experiment. Home isolation in the time of COVID19 has made us all amateur bakers, evidenced by the absence of ALL flours, rye, bread even all purpose flour at the market. Last time only a lonely bag of cornmeal was left. Lucky we were already well stocked with bread and all purpose flour. Though after a month, we are starting run low now. (BTW, I am a scientist, so I very much appreciate your carefully controlled experiments! Kudo's)
When my wife and I did the flour tests at sourdoughhome.com she did the taste testing without knowing which flour was being used. All too often, taste tests can deliver the results you expect, not knowing what you are tasting removes any tendency towards an unconscious, or even conscious, bias. Several times I was surprised that a favored flour didn't deliver the results I was expecting in the breads.
I know all about bias, but I make my videos alone, so it's difficult to do a (double) blind test 😁
Thank you for doing these experiments! They’re very helpful!
Such a nice person and great explanations! Thank you.
Congrats on all the new subbies!!
I have had some successes, but a lot of failures. The last 'loaf" I made, was mostly crust and hollow. I'm not sure what I did but I'm pretty discouraged. Thanks for the videos.
Hey Sune!
My compliments, absolutely fantastic videos!
If you are looking for other experiments, I was always wondering how much the autolyse contributes to the bread.
Another thing: Couple of years age, at a fine dining restaurant, I ate a sourdough bread, with a starter made out of apple peels or apples.
It would be amazing if you would give it a shot.
I usually use 2/3 bread flour, 1/3 whole grain flour, but in my experience, AP flour works fine, too. Sure, it may have a little less chew, a little less lift, but still makes darned good bread. If AP is all I happen to have on hand when I feel inspired to bake, it's certainly not going to stop me from making some fresh, delicious bread! I look forward to seeing your results.
I live in Germany and the flours are named differently here. Since i watch virtually everything in english i didn't bother to look up the different flour types, because i thought only the ash content and amount of bran in the flour would change, so i bought the most readily available flour: pastry flour (T405). Coming from 100% spelt flour this was still a huge improvement, especially to the stability of the raw dough after proofing.
After reading your comment i will have to try out the correct flour type (AP is T550 and bread flour T812, high gluten would be T1050), so thanks for your comment and thanks Sune for the (yet to be released) video on the topic.
@@MrHardstylegamer We are scrued from the start mate, our countries got diferent naming of flower and no one explain it ... becouse 99% of blogers and youtubers do it in english. So in course of baking this topic was explained. Its all about protein in the flower, temperature of water/dough, water and yeast. Diferent countries do diferent types so you cant get same results whit similar products. For an example my country rye flower is not even close to germans. One type of flower take much more water than outher even when they are the same type(Т) becouse they are diferent grade, sort of plant and even supplements.
Thanks for this experiment! Great video 👍
I learn something every time I watch.
Your channel is the best, my friend! Congratulations for the job and a "hi" from Brazil :D
Also, I'm lucky enough to live near a large artisnal bakery. They sell a awesome boule at the local stores for $5. At some point it ain't worth paying a premium for good flour.
Insert cookie monster sounds at the tasting part.
Quite a few sources, like Ken Forkish's Flour Water Salt Yeast do not recommend using bread flour at ALL. 10-11% AP flour is the recommendation there. But AP flour is not standardized, some brands drop as low as 8-9% in the US.
Sune, great vid as always. 2 questions that came up probably both basic... what are you frequently pinching off as you are shaping? also in your other vid, it seems the coil fold was the winning technique overall, do you favor it in some instances over others? Or just when you feel like that's what you want to do? I've seen you use different fold techniques in diff experiments. Thanks!
When he is shaping the dough, and pinches it, he is popping any surface bubbles he sees.
@@notahotshot thanks! Its hard to tell on the videos themselves
I think you can get great results with all the folding methods 😊
Debunking myths! Great experiment... beautiful loaves.
That black bench scraper is super nice 😎
I love your video presentation and what your doing. I’m making my first breads based on your instructions. In the past I’ve been able to get tangy flavor OR good oven spring. Never both. I’m at the bulk fermentation step and my dough is very taught and doesn’t really stretch. After 4 stretch and folds I’m not even close to window pane. My levain doubled in about 2 hours so I think my starter is active. Also the dough is very shaggy still, not smoothing at all. I’m sure by the time you see this, if you do, my bread will be long done so I’m commenting for others who might have the same issue. Also, I want to support what your doing, but a lot of your affiliate links are dead. I’ll wait a bit before I make purchases!
It sounds like you make have a very low hydration? What is it?
About the links: by dead do you mean sold out? And for me to find out if they're dead, I need to know what country you are in :)
Foodgeek Hi. I followed the beginner sourdough recipe exactly, so maybe my flour is a thirsty one? I used King Arthur bread flour and Bobs Mill whole wheat flour. I’m in the US and the links said “no longer available” so I think not just sold out. In particular the baking steel and peel. Thanks for taking time.
Foodgeek for an update, after 9 stretch and folds I was still not getting the feel I’m used to. Very stiff and just couldn’t pull a window pane as well as I’m used to. I baked the bread and actually got a medium oven spring. I’ll cut into it tomorrow and discover the crumb and flavor. While baking it was not announcing a lot of tang with the smell. I really appreciate all the experimenting you do because now I feel I now what to do to make the dough slacker or increase the tang. One variable at a time! Thanks.
@@pilldoktor How to get more tang? I had the same problem, flat loaves with great flavor... Now I get decent spring with no flavor... I am still beginner So I hope I figure it out. I have to use a stand mixer and never know if i am over or under kneading yet, but I always get shaggy dough no matter if I run the machine short or long. So many things can make a difference. This time I scored deeper than ever, the loaf is in the oven and has the best spring I got thus far. Seems I have to knead longer and score deeper... reminds me of something else...
If I get stronger dough then I could ferment longer? isnt that how the "tang" comes from, longer ferment??
Your voice is healing my anxiety 😂😂 Grüße aus Deutschland 🇩🇪
No matter what I do, I can’t get good gluten development here. Sometimes it’s better than others, but I can’t ever get a good windowpane test as you demonstrate. I’m making a sandwich bread with honey and butter, in addition to the standard flour, water, salt, and yeast. It makes a decent loaf, tastes good, sometimes a little crumbly, usually with good enough structure to spread with stuff and to make sandwiches, but I’m quite envious of your good gluten development. I’m usually using a hand ground whole wheat or store bought whole wheat in combination with a regular atta or moida. I think atta is more like all purpose flour and moida is more like pastry flour, so I only use the moida if I don’t have atta. Any thoughts as to why the gluten won’t develop? I’ve tried the stretch and fold. I’ve tried the 300 kneads method. I don’t have access to any high protein bread flour, so that option is out.
Hi, in my limited experience, honey, butter, oil, fat, any other additive will soften the gluten and make it more difficult to get good structure. If on top of that you use low-protein flour, it's not surprising you're having problems. I'd suggest that you limit yourself to flour, water, salt and the starter before you start adding additional components to the mix.
Question - I checked your channel to see if you had anything on using whey instead of water in sourdough bread. I just made ricotta cheese, ohhh it’s heaven on fresh made sourdough and wondered about using the whey in place of some of the water. Since it’s acid I was concerned it may kill the starter. What do you think? THANKS! Love your channel.
Hi Foodgeek! Always enjoy your videos. I have a question: My starter is always feed on AP flour and it's very active and established. I make bread with it. But I'm not sure if, when making my levain (I never use straight up starter), I should feed it with whatever the flour is that will go in my sourdough (mostly bread flour) or the same AP flour? Could you clarify? Also...have you ever tested the Tartine method against the regular method you use? If so, what was the result, and if not, do you have an opinion on it? I TRULY appreciate your reply, as I've asked a couple of cooks but received no answer. Stay healthy!!:)
you keep on surprising us , Thanks alot man for everything .
After watching so many of your videos, I'm always surprised at this point that there isn't a permanent pre-shaping, bench-scraper shaped, half-circle track ground into your countertop. So. Many. Loaves..... ;) Awesome videos, my friend!
Thank you ❤️
I'm so glad I found this channel. One quick question, in Germany (where I currently live) there's no such a thing as "bread flour", they have many categories, and I'm still trying them out, which is usually tricky as you need to find the correct hydration for each one. Have you ever worked with german flours? Any suggestion?
Discovered your channel recently. Thank you for the detailed experiment and your expertise
Check the protein % rather than the name on the bag. In Canada, AP flour typically has ~13% protein which is equiv to most "bread" flour
Can I ask you how much protein has the AP flour you’ve used?
10.5%
Foodgeek thank you
I use organic flour from the supermarket all the time (I think it's something regional, or at least only from the next state over). I use AP (or 550 as we call it in Germany) when I want a particularly lighter bread and milder taste compared to 1050 or whole. But they all work for sourdough bread.
The real distinction is that you shouldn't try to sustain your starter. That deserves whole grain flour!
Great video and explanation
I have some questions
Why my bread has bubble end bake?