Sour Ciabatta

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Chausiubao

Senior Cook
Joined
Jan 14, 2006
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107
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California
I just made a Ciabatta, about 3 days ago, and when I tasted it, it was a little bit sour, not noticeable, but after eating it, there was a bit of acid in my mouth, a sour after taste maybe.

I just can't think of why this would happen, so I was hoping maybe you guys could give me a little bit more insight into the issue.

I got the recipe from the bread baker's apprentice, and I used biga as the preferment.

So I just made the biga the night before, and after 11 hours in the refrigerator, I took it out to use.

I was forced to substitute a half cup of whole wheat flour in addition to the unbleached white bread flour, but It was nearly unnoticeable. I don't think that my primary fermentation went longer then it should have, and the secondary fermentation was comparable. After the bread came out, it was nicely browned, and had good irregular holes. Yet the taste was not exactly sour, not exactly clear.

Besides the fermentation, do you think there was any other way for the sourness to appear?
 
Chausiubao said:
I just made a Ciabatta, about 3 days ago, and when I tasted it, it was a little bit sour, not noticeable, but after eating it, there was a bit of acid in my mouth, a sour after taste maybe...Besides the fermentation, do you think there was any other way for the sourness to appear?
I honestly can't think of any other reason than over-proofing (fermentation). Perhaps this was with the biga rather than the final recipe.

Less likely, perhaps using some whole wheat flour was the culprit. The ww flour may have become rancid from prolonged storage at room temp (this is assuming the ww flour was milled from the entire berry - there is oil in the germ of the kernel). How fresh was the ww flour?
 
Yea, it must have been over fermentation at some point in the process of bread making, but I can't think of any point during any fermentation that it became over twice risen.
 
Breads from "preferments" (aka: sourdough) call them biga or whatever name you wish (depends on the language you want to use) ARE a little more sour by their very nature.

I'll go with subfuscpersona - perhaps some of your flour was old and rancid? Or, perhaps it was just the normal acidity in the bread that you were not expecting? Maybe that "Ciabatta" burger you got from Jack-In-The-Box that you used as an "Artisinal" bread reference wasn't made from a preferment????

I've used biga that was a week old ... to get more twang - but it was never what I would call "sour".
 
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Remember to factor in the refrigeration time of dough - for example, if the biga was allowed to rise at room temp, then punched down and refrigerated, you have given it 2 rises. (As we all know, dough rises in the 'frig; refrigerator fermentation only stops until the entire mass of dough is cooled to about 40F, at which point yeast becomes dormant). Also, if you removed the cold biga from the 'frig and let it come to room temp before including it in your final recipe, there was some additional fermentation going on. So how many fermentation cycles did your biga actually have?
 
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