It's time to enter the gluten matrix.
, 80 percent of an open crumb comes from those two concepts alone. Here we’ll talk about fermentation and how you can apply it to your sourdough baking.: Microorganisms break down starches to produce carbon dioxide gas and sour flavors. For breads, proper fermentation maximizes the potential for effective expansion and trapping of gases in a well-developed gluten matrix. It is also the key to developing flavor in your bread.
Your starter should not only show signs of strong activity but also have a relatively thick viscosity. Bakers add starter in amounts upward of 20 percent of the total flour weight in a dough, so you don't want an overly thin starter going into the mix. Putting aside hydration levels , the thickness of a starter is largely determined by its maturity.
Finally, bakers make the distinction between using a young and mature levain. Degree of maturity refers to the point at which you choose to incorporate your levain into a dough. A young levain is used at or just before peak activity; it smells mild, faintly sour, and has a thick consistency. A mature levain smells more acidic and pungent, and it might be runnier in texture. In general, I opt for using a young levain because it doesn’t compromise gluten structure, facilitating a tall loaf.
Why is it called “bulk”? The answer is primarily a matter of scale. In a high-volume bakery setting, bakers mix enormous amounts of dough in order to produce dozens of loaves. Handling individual portions of dough over the lifetime of the baking cycle is inefficient, time-consuming, and takes up too much space in the kitchen. Instead, bakers let an entire mass of dough ferment before dividing and shaping into individual loves.
How do you know when bulk fermentation is complete? It’s difficult to answer definitively. Remember, you’re going to be baking your bread in a ripping hot oven. That blast of heat encourages rapid metabolism of starches—a feeding frenzy—and expansion of the dough. If you vastly overproof your dough, those trapped gas bubbles coalesce into a tight network and stick to each other, resulting in an overly tight crumb structure; at worst, the dough collapses.
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