Monastery bread mistakes analysis
Recipe in Russian (run it through the google translation) https://brotgost.blogspot.com/2018/12/blog-post.html?fbclid=IwAR2XYpM14tgTXPgoKt1db3XS9petMTSEBnKbZpbSktLuj4YMkiQ_rIiUXxY&m=1
I baked this bread several times with great success, but this time I made several mistakes and the crumb surely shows it.
First thought looking at this crumb: weak starter
My liquid starter (made by fermenting white rye malt and raisins with small addition of vinegar) was less bubbly and fizzy than I wanted. I can think of two reasons:
-temperature of incubation was too high
-addition of vinegar was too big (and a piece of vinegar mother got into my jar, too)
Opara made with this ferment worked really slow. And I also made it too dense.
Final dough was overhydrated.
So the final result is an extremely tasty and flavorful loaf with really ugly looking crumb. It’s rather acidic (which isn’t a feature of this bread, if made properly) but really nice to eat. The dense crumb has a pleasant, soft, cakey mouthfeel.
And down below, a picture from my archive, showing how this magnificent bread should look like:
