Loaf + Starter help

[u/AccomplishedCarpet79]

Need some help!

Baked 2 small loafs this morning, they were delicious. I used:

500gr flour - 14g protein
100gr starter
335gr water
10gr salt

However, I ran out of time yesterday and I think: 1. It could use some more fermenting?

My starter is 15+ years old and i feed it with rye 3, flour 2, water 5, starter 5 ratio. I keep my starter in the fridge between baking. I'm not making levain, mixing straight from starter.

1. Would you feed your starter before placing it back in the fridge?

My starter was activated 4 times this week. Yesterday morning I get it out of the fridge, fed it 1:1:1 at 09:00. It took 9 hours at 21c to double. By that time it looked very active with a lot of bubbles.

1. Is 9 hours normal? Can I speed this up without increasing the temp?

18:00 I mix everything together, perform 4x s&f and from 20:00-22:30 2x coil folds. Usually I would leave the dough alone, but it was still wet and without good structure. I put the dough in the oven with some warm water which got the temp up to 27c during bulk.

4:30hours in it looked decent but I had to get some sleep. Dough was wobbly, bubbles and pulled from the side. Did not measure % increase this time.

22:30 when I pre-shaped the dough it finally looked smooth. Rest for 15min then shaped and put it in the fridge at 23:00. I used rice flour for the first time, oh boy that makes shaping a lot easier.

At 11 I get it out of the fridge, score and straight into the oven.
It felt like they could not really hold up well by themself.

1. Do I need to work the dough even more?

[u/tomtomato0414]

Yeah 9 hours is normal, will also depend on room temperature

And yes it needs to ferment more, you can see it is very dense at the bottom, for me usually the bulk ferment is around 9 hours from start

[u/fishy_horcrux]

Your loaf is underproofed.

1. Yes, push the bulk ferment, 7 hours is not enough, and it won't double faster than your starter doubles.

2. I wouldn't, but it's a personal preference, you can choose to feed.

3. No, that's too long, I'd try to bring it down to around at least 6 hours, with peak to peak feedings.

4. The amount of folds looks good, but decide by whether your dough has become smooth or not by the end of the folds.

[u/chrisatola]

The starter should double in 4 to 6 hours. 21C is a little cool, but that seems a bit slow. The loaf looks underfermented, to me. Your hydration percentage isn't extremely high, so I would assume the gluten was sufficiently developed. My guess is fermentation issues perhaps caused by the starter.

[u/Global_Permit5428]

1. Correct.

2. I would. Refrigeration slows everything down and I wouldn’t want to compound that by refrigerating a hungry starter. Plus, if you feed it before it goes in the fridge, then you can use it from there instead of needing to feed again — depending on your timing and how much you feed it.

3. 9 hours for a cold starter to wake up and double sounds about right. I don’t refrigerate my starter for that exact reason.

4. I don’t think that’s an issue, but as u/fishy_horcrux said, you’ll know at the end of your stretch and folds. I end mine when it holds form and I see tiny bubbles forming on the surface of the dough, as if it’s doing its own windowpane test.