New bakers often ask why their sourdough bread is too dense. How to make sourdough bread lighter and get the open crumbs? This is something we home bakers struggle with a lot.
Sourdough bread is all about texture and flavor. The flavor is easier to accomplish and comes naturally by adding appropriate ingredients, but for getting the right texture on your bread, a whole lot of skills go in.
In this post, we will try to understand the factors that affect the texture of sourdough bread and how to use them to our advantage and make light sourdough bread.
Table of contents
There are two types of dense sourdough bread in my opinion. First is the too dense bread. And the second one is just dense bread.
What makes the bread too dense?
Too dense sourdough bread is basically due to insufficient yeast activity in the dough. The first thing that comes to mind is under-proofing. In sourdough bread, if you do not give enough time for the wild yeast to multiply and reach a decent population where it can cause enough leavening, your bread is bound to be too dense. Another possible reason for a super dense bread could be the death of the yeast due to some reason. The reasons could be chlorinated water or bleached flour that still has a high percentage of bleach residues.
Also, adding salt directly to yeast. In our case, if you add salt directly to a sourdough starter, it can cause a lot of yeast causalities. How much damage it can cause will depend on the quantity of salt and starter and also the vigor and endurance of the starter.
There are various factors that could make the bread dense. Let us decode them one by one.
It happens rarely that sourdough bread is too dense. It is basically due to a major blunder, that either killed the microbiota( Yeast and LAB) in the dough or did not let them grow at all.
Contrary to that a dense sourdough loaf is a more common problem that could be attributed to many factors.
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- Making a quick sourdough starter with minimum discard: A Comprehensive guide
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- Fried sourdough starter to make your life easy: 5 recipes!
- wild yeast bread from fruit yeast water
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What makes the bread lighter?
The end texture of the bread depends on the two attributes.
- Gas produced in the bread:
Carbon di-oxide gas is released on yeast fermentation. More the gas released, lighter will be the texture of the bread. This is controlled directly by the yeast activity. There should be ample yeast activity in the sourdough starter and also in the dough. Before the dough goes into the oven, there should be plenty of yeast that should have undergone yeast fermentation and released enough carbon dioxide to make the dough light
It simply means that the yeast should be active or the sourdough starter should be ripe and dough should be well fermented ( bulk proofed and proofed) before going into the oven.
If you are interested in learning what goes on in your sourdough bread Get a sneak-peek into the chemistry of the bread baking.
2. Gas retained in the bread:
Now that we have ensured that there is going to enough yeast activity and enough gas production in the dough. We have to ensure that our dough is capable of holding on to that gas( or carbon dioxide in this case). This is possible by a developing strong gluten structure, shaping the dough rightly, and building the tension on the surface of the dough.
Now, let us discussion each of these factor separately below.
Factors that decide if the bread is going to be dense or light
Starter
Not adding starter at its right stage
The sourdough starter should be active enough and ripe when it is added to the dough.
Many of us keep our starter refrigerated and take it out and put it directly in the dough. The microbiota, i.e wild yeast, and Lactobacilli in the refrigerated starter are mostly in the lag phase. Such a starter is called an inactive starter.
Sometimes they could be in the decline phase. From either of the stages, the yeast takes more time to start growing and multiplying. So, we must feed and bring it into an exponential growth phase and use the starter once it reaches the peak or stable stage. Make a point to add the starter to the dough when it is at its peak.
If you are having difficulty understanding, what the hell is this lag and log phases mumbo jumbo…read this detailed post on the sourdough starter to understand the growth cycle of yeast in a starter.
Unstable and immature New starter:
Sometimes people start a sourdough starter and start baking the 6th or 7th day. At this stage, the starter is not mature enough. The yeast colonies at this stage are very susceptible. Sometimes, all it needs is some direct contact with salt to die. Whereas a stable and sturdy mature starter is resistant to most pH differences.
Inappropriate quantity of the starter:
Most recipes ask for 10-20 percent of the starter. Though you can bake with as little as a 5 percent starter and make levain. But, like I always say, there is no perfect recipe for sourdough bread. Simply because all the starters are different and all are baking with different flour at different kitchen temperatures. But if you have a stable starter, most recipes will work for you. But no two people using the same recipe will get the same result. So, add the sourdough starter depending on the vigor of your starter. If you have a clumsy starter you need to add more than the recipe suggests.
If your starter does not peak( double or triple, whatever the maximum rise looks like for your starter) in less than 6 hours at room temperature ( 65-75 0 F) at a 1:1:1 feeding ratio, consider your starter as clumsy or less vigorous. The low or cold ambient temperature also makes the starter feel clumsy. In both, situations try making up for it by bumping up the percentage of the starter in whatever recipe you are following.
Sourdough baking to a great extend is about understanding your starter and pivoting the recipe according to it.
How to fix if the sourdough bread is too dense due to starter issues:
- Add starter only when it is at its peak.
- Let the starter mature a bit before using. Do not risk baking with a very new starter.
- If you have a clumsy starter, increases the starter percentage by 4 to 5 percent in the recipe you are following.
Flour
Bread made with high fiber flours or say whole-grain flours are dense by nature. There is just not enough protein content( gluten) in such flour. Gluten helps to give the body to the bread and creates a network of web-like structures to trap the air, which eventually makes the bread lighter and fluffier. Very low protein content (gluten) and too much bran is another thing that might be making your bread too dense.
When baking with wild starters, we must avoid using bleached flours. These flours are mostly bleached by chemical bleaching agents. A new batch of flour might have more residues in it and it is pretty much capable of killing the yeast from the sourdough starter. And with no live yeast in your dough, you are bound to have a dense bread or rather too dense of a bread.
How to fix dense sourdough bread due to the type of flour?
- Never use bleached flours. If possible use organic flours for the best results.
- Whenever you substitute high protein (high gluten) flour with low protein flour(high fiber), be prepared to lose some of the lightness of the bread.
- Look for high-protein flour. Choose bread flour over all-purpose flour. Strong bread flour will give the best light and fluffy bread. The protein percentage in them may vary from 12-14 percent.
- Just changing the type of flour will make so much difference. I started with 12.7% King Arthur bread flour and recommend it to beginners.
- When just starting, it is advisable to stick to the flour ratios defined in the recipe. Replacing all purpose flour with whole wheat will alter the overall hydration of the dough. As wheat bran will absorb most of the moisture and make the dough dry if the adjustments for the water are not made. This is why your bread is dry.
- Also, it is better to start with a country white sourdough loaf and try to perfect your technique and skills with it, before moving on to more complex flours.
- If your recipe uses whole wheat flour, try shifting the flour to remove some of the excessive bran. Also, sometimes soaking the bran( whole flour) overnight can help.
Type of water
Using highly chlorinated water can negatively affect the yeast growth in the dough and make sourdough too dense. By highly I mean anything more than 2 ppm(parts per million) of chlorine in the water. Most tap waters contain an acceptable level of chlorine. According to CDC most of the community water supply systems in the United States have to disinfect water using Chlorine and chloramine.
4 ppm( parts per million) being the safe drinking water level, on average any tap water can have 1-4 ppm of chlorine.
According to the CDC free chlorine concentration of 1 ppm is enough to kill all the disease-causing germs. Yeast is not a disease-causing microbe, but chlorine does not distinguish between microbes. So, yeasts are lost as collateral damage.
Though the baker’s yeast might not be affected as badly as the wild yeast. Naturally occurring microbes are more susceptible to most chemical disinfectants.
That is why it is important to use unchlorinated filtered water to feed the starter. In the case of bread dough, on the other hand, the chlorine concentration is further diluted, which in most cases will go well below 1 ppm. So, it is very unlikely that it can affect your bread so much. But it can have detrimental effects on wild yeast activity. Surely, something to keep in check.
There are two other ways in which chlorine affects the dough. Firstly the taste of bread is replaced by the chemical smell. And secondly, it affects the functions of some enzymes in the flour.
Troubleshoot:
If your tap water smells excessively chlorinated, you might want to ditch the tap water for making the dough next time.
Dough making
While preparing the dough, two steps are crucial for making a light and well-risen bread. The first is to autolyse the dough. Autolyse helps naturally in gluten development. So, if you are not autolyzing your dough, you are missing something that could help to make your bread less dense.
Another big mistake adding salt and yeast together. Salt hurts the yeast activity. It absorbs most of the water from the yeast through osmosis and makes the yeast weak enough to reproduce and multiply.
How to make perfect dough for a light sourdough bread
- Give at least a gap of 15 minutes between the addition of yeast and salt. Add the yeast first and incorporate it into the dough. Add the salt later on.
- Autolyse is a must in making a sourdough bread
Kneading
Kneading helps to develop the gluten structure of the dough. Gluten is the key protein found in wheat. And gluten is the most important factor in bread making. It helps in the retention of the gas to make the bread lighter.
There are Glutenin and gliadin proteins in the wheat flour. On hydration, they immediately bind together to form gluten. That's why autolyse is important as it allows natural gluten structure formation. On kneading, we further strengthen them to become longer and stronger. The well-kneaded dough will have a very strong gluten structure to a level that you can stretch the dough to form a thin translucent film.
This test is called the windowpane test. The test is used to determine whether the dough is ready or not.
Underdeveloped gluten structure in the dough will make your bread dense. Take it as a web of strong gluten structures that help the bread to hold up its shape and allows for trapping more air in them, making the bread lighter and fluffy.
How to knead properly to make the sourdough bread lighter?
- Knead the dough to a level where it starts to hold its shape and you can stretch it to form a windowpane, that's when you know that your dough is ready to be baked. And by no means you will get a sourdough bread that is dense.
- Incase of sourdough bread, we achieve gluten strength by a series of stretching and folding. Make sure to give enough time for the gluten to relax in between two stretches, else it just gets stretched too much that it will begin to break apart.
- Even no-knead bread is decently light. So even if you do not knead the bread sufficiently, your bread could be good. It could be one thing or a combination of more than one factor.
- Try to work on one thing at a time. So that you could understand what is causing your bread to be too dense.
Proofing: Reason why your bread is dense, heavy, and gummy?
Proofing is the stage where we let the dough rest so that enough yeast activity is achieved in the dough. Under proofed dough is one of the main reasons for a dense and gummy bread. Since there is not enough yeast activity in the dough, there will not be enough gas in the dough. Hence it will bake as a loaf of sourdough which will be super dense.
Look at this bread. It is highly under proofed, super dense at bottom, and too heavy.
Once the maximum population of yeast is achieved inside the dough, it will quickly reach its optimum potential as soon it will hit a hot oven. Giving the much-desired oven spring, which is crucial to obtain a lighter sourdough bread. The dough should at least double in volume. This is where we often go wrong and get a sourdough bread that is too dense.
Though it all comes with practice, and sourdough baking has a learning curve. We can always take some measure that can assist us along the way.
What happens to gluten on over-proofing?
An over-proofed dough will fall flat and never hold its shape. Wondering why?
Well, when the dough is fermenting, the gluten stands hold the carbon dioxide inside. We can physically see it in a form of dough bulking up, becoming light and airy. If this keeps going on for a time longer than desired, there will be a stage when there will be excessive yeast activity in the dough. As a result, the gluten will reach its maximum capability to withhold carbon dioxide. At any point more than that, gluten will begin to break. All the strength that we build into the gluten while kneading, will be lost slowly as the bread over-proofs.
Troubleshoot under-proofed and over proofed bread
So the possible ways in which you can solve the issues related to over and under proofing of the dough and make the sourdough loaf much lighter are:
- Use a transparent container to stretch and fold, and bulk rise ( first rise) the dough. It helps us to keep better track of the increase in the volume of the dough, throughout the bulk rise period.
- We do not want to shape an under-risen dough. By using a transparent container and marking the dough level on it so, we can keep track of the dough rise happening and estimate the ideal stage for shaping in due course of time.
- Cold retard is also helpful in strengthening the gluten structure of the dough. So, cold retard not only helps to develop the flavor but also helps build a stronger gluten structure.
- If the dough has been over-proofed, your best bet is to bake it anyway. There is no sure-shot way to recover it.
- If you see that the dough might be ready to bake in 2 hours or so and your work or other commitment does not allow you to bake it at that timeframe. You can put the dough in the fridge to reduce the yeast activity and buy yourself more time.
- Finger test to gauge the readiness of the dough to be baked:
Finger Test
*Poke a finger into the dough and see if it bounces back slowly, leaving an indentation. The dough is perfectly proofed and is ready to bake.
*If on poking, the dough bounces back quickly and leaves no evident indentation: Dough is under-proofed and needs more time to proof.
* If on poking, the dough does not merely bounce back: It indicated that the dough has been over-proofed.
Scoring
Scoring helps to make sourdough bread lighter. It opens up an escape line for the dough to rise and grow as it springs up. Not scoring can cause dense bread and the bread will crack open at uneven places, yet not to its full potential.
- Always score the sourdough bread with deep enough slashes, if doing one or two slashes. And make enough slashes if doing decorative multiple slashes. It helps the sourdough to become lighter.
- Do not score over-proofed sourdough bread. It will remove the trapped air and the bread will fall flat and become denser.
Shaping a sourdough bread
Uneven shaping has also been attributed to dense bread. Shaping is very crucial in a high hydration sourdough bread. We need to shape in a way that dough holds its shape. Also, we need to shape the sourdough boule or batard in a way that tension is build up on the surface. The tension causes the gluten to bounce more on baking. Hence causing a light loaf.
Look at the image above. I did it to show the importance of shaping in making the bread lighter and spring better. I made these two small sourdough bread the same way. The only difference was in the shaping. I did not pre-shape the bread on the left. Also, I did not build any tension on the surface of the dough while shaping it. I baked both of them in the same condition. The difference was astounding! See for yourself. The left bread was way denser and the right one has a fairly better structure with an open crumb.
So, always pre-shape a sourdough bread and learn the appropriate technique to shape a sourdough boule and a batard. Shape in a way that creates tension on the surface of the loaf.
Baking the bread right
Baking bread at the right temperature is another important factor that can affect the texture of sourdough bread. If all things are done well, but the bread is not baked appropriately, there is no benefit of all the hard work.
- I suggest you bake in a preheated Dutch oven at 500 0 F or around it for half the time say 20-25 minutes depending on the size of the bread and then 40-50 0 F, lower for the same amount of time with the lid opened.
- If baking on a pizza stone, place a tray with a few ice cubes in the lower rack of the oven to supply the moisture component for baking bread.
- If everything is done right, your bread will certainly spring as soon it hits such a high-temperature oven, causing the bread to lighten up and create a gorgeous crumb.
How to make sourdough bread less dense?
- Add starter only when it is at its peak. Let the starter mature a bit before using. Do not risk baking with a very new starter. If you have a clumsy starter, increases the starter percentage by 4 to 5 percent.
- Avoid bleached flours when baking with a sourdough starter. Choose flours with high protein content.
- Do not add sourdough starter and salt together.
- Sometimes dense bread has to do with hydration. Lack of enough hydration in the dough will make dry and dense bread. So always follow the recipe precisely to stay within the desired hydration percentage.
- Stretch and fold until the dough starts to hold its shape and do a windowpane test for confirmation. Well-developed gluten is quintessential for light and fluffy bread.
- Pre-shape and let the dough bench rest for 15-20 minutes before the final shaping. Work on your shaping skills.
- Do a finger poke test to check if the dough is proofed enough and is ready to bake. Under-proofed bread is bound to be dense.
- Bake in a preheated Dutch oven. Get an oven thermometer to know the exact temperature of the oven. The high temperature helps to give the initial rise to the bread as soon as it settles inside a heated Dutch oven and the heated lid is placed on it. This initial rise is called the oven spring and makes the bread less dense. Oven-spring is crucial for open crumb sourdough.
- Score the bread before putting the bread in the Dutch oven. Scoring gives a fault line for the bread to expand and is a way to ensure maximum oven spring and prevent the sourdough bread from being too dense.
- Always keep an eye on the dough even if it is cold proofing in the fridge. If cold retard day coincides with the groceries replenishment in your fridge, your dough is proof much faster and will be ready for baking, much ahead of the scheduled time. So, whenever you refill groceries in your fridge, keep an eye on the proofing bread.
Frequently asked Questions
Possible reasons:
Inactive starter, Bleached bread flour, under developed gluten, under proofing, inappropriate scoring and baking.
Too dense white bread is basically due to insufficient yeast activity in the dough. The first thing that comes to mind is under-proofing. If you do not give enough time for the wild yeast to multiply and reach a decent population where it can cause enough leavening, your bread is bound to be too dense. Another possible reason for a super dense bread could be the death of the yeast due to some reason. The reasons could be chlorinated water or bleached flour that still has a high percentage of bleach residues.
Also, adding salt directly to yeast. In our case, if you add salt directly to a sourdough starter, it can cause a lot of yeast causalities. How much damage it can cause will depend on the quantity of salt and starter and also the vigor and endurance of the starter.
So you ended up baking dense and gummy bread. Only when the bread came out of the oven you realized that about the bread texture. What to do next? What can we do with dense bread? It will actually depend on how dense your bread is! One thing that you can do is make bread crumbs from it. Just ensure that the bread is baked well. Then you can go ahead and let it cool. Slice the bread into thin pieces and pulse in a blender. You can flavor these bread crumbs with herbs of your choice and salt. Mix well and bake till crispy. Let them cool and pack in a pet jar.
Well, in a no-knead bread, only the very initial gluten development takes place. I mean the early gluten development that happens on adding water and letting it autolyse. Since there is no kneading involved, there will no further strengthen and elongation of gluten strands. And we all know, how crucial gluten is for making a sourdough loaf lighter. Long gluten strands lead to the lace-like crumbs in the bread. Most commonly called open crumbs. But unfortunately, in the case of no-knead bread, gluten does not get any opportunity to strengthen. Hence, a no-knead bread will tend to be denser.
In my personal opinion, since no-knead bread does not get much of an oven spring the sure shot way to obtain a lighter loaf that way is to let the dough overproof a little.
Particularly, if you are baking a no-knead sourdough sandwich bread in a loaf pan, over-proofing will not hurt much. As, on over-proofing, maximum air is already trapped in the bread, and holding the shape is not an issue as the loaf pan provides the desired support. So, it will turn out much lighter than otherwise.
Also, cold proofing the dough in the fridge can help to make the gluten stronger. As a result, the bread gets a better oven spring and becomes a bit more lighter.
Oven spring is the sudden increase in the bread volume as soon as it hits the hot oven. This makes the bread super light and helps to achieve a more open crumb. That is what we call a quality bread. There are two key factors for achieving a good oven spring. One is a well-developed gluten structure and the second is appropriately proofed dough( neither under-proofed nor over-proofed).
Some popular sourdough recipes on the blog:
- Sourdough hot cross bun recipe
- The best Sourdough doughnuts recipe with Cinnamon sugar
- How to make sourdough hot dog buns from scratch?
- Sourdough sandwich bread recipe
- Fried sourdough starter to make your life easy: 5 recipes!
If you found this comprehensive guide to light and less dense sourdough bread useful, do not forget to share it with your friends. We would highly appreciate a comment and a rating! It helps me create more resources like this.
Happy baking!
Fernanda
Thank you for putting together those informations, it really helped me to understand some aspects of my bread making process. Super nice. 🙂
Linda K.
Thank you for all this wonderful information. I created a new rye starter a few months ago to replace the one that I lost to mold. I think the new one was a couple of weeks old when I put it to rest in the refrigerator three months ago. This week I took it out and fed it for a few days. It's very bubbly and is almost tripling in size within 4 hours of feeding, which tricked me into thinking it was ready. I baked a loaf of bread this morning after a cold retard in the refrigerator overnight--about 12 hours. The flavor is excellent and it got a huge ear, but the crumb was somewhat dense. I guess my starter needs a couple of weeks of more feeding before I try again. If that isn't the problem, then I'll know what else to look at, thanks to this article.
Richard
There's lots of good info in here for us learners in the mystical world of sourdough bread making! Thanks so much.