Fermentation Difficulties
I am having difficulty determining whether my starter is ready to use lately, after many months and years of baking.
I've switched to baking exclusively from The Perfect Loaf book. My starter seems to double after around 6 hours no matter how much starter I leave in it, even scraps... I feed it with Central Milling all purpose and freshly milled rye. I imagine the microbial content is off the charts.
I just don't know what to do anymore. I don't have a "proven" recipe at this point in time, and I use a lot of freshly milled wheat of all kinds. It feels like every time I bake lately it's a little blind and a bit of a guessing game and the recommended bulk/proof times are so wildly different from the book or most recipes online. If the book says proof for 1.5 hours, mine can take up to 6... I don't get it. My starter seems to be so vigorous in its little container, but when it's put into a dough of similar final mixing temperature, it seems so sluggish. It doesn't equate whatsoever. My dough never gets those classic bulk fermentation signs, such as a very taught skin, bubbles on the surface, even though my starter is filled with bubbles. My fermentation always looks... Bland, is the best way I can describe it... But my breads are never particularly under-roofed.
What am I to do? Should I go as far as possible in one direction and experiment, such as almost trying to overproof a dough? I live in Florida, I find I need to reduce my hydration by up to 10% compared to The Perfect Loaf book.
Any recipe recommendations for sort of just nailing down a proper fermentation?
Use your eyes - not the book. That's what the pros do. Enjoy!
For bulk fermentation, my suggestion is to use a straight sided container - much easier to judge the amount of rise, and take notes of each bake - room temp, percent starter, hours in BF, how much rise. Ideally the container is fairly narrow so you can get a good idea of the amount of increase in volume just by looking at the level in the container. Eventually, you should determine the process that works best for you. It is really hard to follow, but try to make just one change at a time - say bulk ferment to 50% increase in volume, next time 75% increase, next time 100% and note the differences.
Personally I'm someone who torture my starter like a sadist. I Starved it in the frigid corner of the fridge for months on end and only take it out to feed when I want to bake bread, which is erratic. Sometimes I bake every other day, after that, it might be in another 6 months. Therefore, I never really count the time it takes to double after feed. I just have a rough idea that it takes about a night to be ready, and if it wasn't outside of the fridge for an obscenely long (like, more than 12 hours), I'll just use the 'levain' as is and infer the fermentation rate from the amount of time it take to increase in size. Like, after I let it bulk for 2 hours, if I observe around 50% increase, then I'll come back in around another 2. Or if I already took the long approach to develop gluten (like, 2 hours for stretch and fold), I might just come back in another half an hour and start shaping at 75% increase. If I determine it might not be ready for bake at my convenient time, I might shove it into the fridge to retard then take it out to bake or continue the fermentation/proofing later (try to account for the time the fermentation can still continue before the dough cool down enough also. Doing this frequently enough, you might be able to get a perfectly proofed bread for bake out of the fridge - not that I can do it reliably though). Well, this will affect the taste of the dough, but I'm okay with it.
My point is, unless you have a strict life schedule to follow, punctual time seems less and less relevant to me these day. What seems to be true to me so far is that the size increase seems to be the more correct indicator of fermentation stage that I have to keep an eye out for. And if punctual time is what I need, commercial yeast addition is my choice. Not totally replacing starter, but add in some amount to the dough to make it more punctual.