Thanks Maurizio, fingers crossed :-D!

Hey Dody! Thanks so much for the feedback, means a lot and happy to have been a help! I love using water instead of flour at this stage 🙂 So much cleaner and easier, IMO. Sounds like you’re on the right track! Keep at it.

I only just started with sourdough about 2 months ago and some results in the journey so far have been a complete mystery to me.

There were lovely doughs which looked with all the signs ready for pre-shaping, but the moment they landed on my work-surface they simply turned into a blob that kept spreading out, being a huge sticky mess I ended up having all over myself and utterly impossible to do anything with it or control, so I had to bin them. Looking back now I realize that I didn’t do enough to strengthen the dough to get it where it should be. Shame on me, but I didn’t know any better. And your tip on using water on the bench-knife and my hands was a life-saver, no idea why I didn’t think about it after wetting my hands for the stretch and folds each time?

Big learning curve, but I really enjoy it and hopefully one day I get the results I’m hoping for under the circumstances I’ve got! With your very helpful videos and instructions I’ve already succeeded twice with breads that where actually rising contrary to flat bread coming out of the process. Not as much as they were meant to, but rising. And the taste was wonderful!

Thank you heaps!!!

Sunny greetings from Nazaré/Portugal
Dody

Thanks for your response! This happened to me when I am tightening the dough, and it starts looking really good but for some reason I kept going until it started ripping. And once that starts, it’s all over. It seems impossible to achieve a smooth skin from then on. Oh well, lesson learned! Time to try again. Thanks again!

You’re welcome, Patricia! That’s usually due to under strengthening. Give the dough a longer kneading time or add in more stretches and folds during bulk fermentation to impart additional strength before you get to that point!

You’re very welcome! It’s very hard to over work the dough by hand, but if you’re doing it during preshaping, just pinch it together or do your best to keep a consistent and smooth skin on the outside of the dough and try your best to limit interaction from then on out.

Thanks!

You’re welcome, Kevin, and great comments. You’re spot on there with the flour variety/specifications being a very important component as well. In the end, it does all come to this!

I would add that when baking with doughs made with wheats with lower levels of glutenin the dough will never develop any strength no matter what the baker does. These doughs only have very light kneading and pre-shaping and shaping is liable to break the gluten structure down. Sonora would be a flour like that in your neck of the woods. Perhaps some of the re-emerging heirloom land races too. (Perhaps Spelt as well.) Here in the UK I bake a lot with heritage flours the taste is stunning, but they only tolerate hydration at 60-65%. So much flavour was lost with the Green Revolution development of modern Commodity flours and slow fermentation is only part of the flavour story.