Adjusting the Sour Flavor in Sourdough Bread - Amy Bakes Bread (2024)

FAQs

How do you adjust sourdough sourness? ›

You could also add some sugar or honey to your dough. Both of these will reduce the ferment time of your dough because they provide a fast food for the yeast. This will in turn decrease the sourness of your sourdough. You'll find a full guide to adding sugar to your sourdough here and honey here.

In general, more minerals yield more sour taste. Using flours with more ash, or mineral, content, will yield more sour taste. If you can't get enough ash, adding a bit of whole wheat flour to your recipe, which is what is done with the 20% Bran Flour, will boost the sour of a bread.

The signature sourdough flavor comes from a combination of lactic and acetic acids, created as the dough rises and ferments. Refrigerating the dough encourages the production of more acetic acid, which is the tangier of the two. Thus, this bread with its refrigerated starter has the ideal balance of sour flavor.

(b) Sourdough bread is light in texture and tastes slightly sour. The bread is made using two types of microorganism, a yeast and a bacterium. The bacterium can make acids such as lactic acid. The acid makes the bread taste sour.

How Do You Neutralize Sour Taste in Food? If a dish is too sour, add a little bit of sugar! Sweetness balances out sour flavors, so if something makes your mouth pucker, a dash of sugar may help soften the blow of the sour food.

My starter is very acidic. How can I de-acidify it? Try feeding your starter a high feeding ratio (e.g., 1:5:5) and discard and refeed right after the starter rises and peaks. This is known as the “peak-to-peak” method.

A very sour taste (not a pleasantly sour tang like properly fermented sourdough) A sour/fermented smell. You might notice a “corn” flavor to the baked crust (sometimes there is a faint odor like popcorn) Crust may have small tears in it, randomly over the surface.

In fact the acidity is a dough conditioner that softens the texture of whole grains and makes the bread more pliable. Hack: apple cider vinegar. I often add about a tablespoon of ACV to bread as a dough conditioner. This doesn't affect the flavor much if at all.

If your bread has a sour, yeasty flavour and smells of alcohol then you have either used too much yeast.or you may have use stale yeast or creamed fresh yeast with sugar.

Many store-bought “sourdough” breads use just a small amount of sourdough starter and throw that and other flavors in there to give the bread a sourdough taste — while the action of rising the bread is done with commercial yeast.

What is the secret behind the sour of sourdough bread? ›

First, the production of lactic acid (as well as acetic acid) lowers the pH of your starter to around 3.5 (and as high as 5). This lowering of pH results in that characteristic sour flavor of sourdough. Second, a low pH eliminates unwanted pathogens like enterobacteria or Staphylococcus.

The taste of sourdough can be influenced by factors including fermentation time, temperature and flour type, as well as the microbes present in the starter.

It's an easy variable to manage using water temperature and a Proofer and/or a Sourdough Home. For less acidity: Use water around 80°F (27°C) and a fermentation temperature of 70-76°F (21-24°C) to favor the yeast and create milder flavors.

You can reduce the sour flavor by feeding your discard some fresh flour and water. At that point, it's more of an active starter than discard. Your recipe will not only taste less sour but also rise a bit more than usual with the extra yeast in it.

Still, there are three specific factors that can really affect your bread's flavor: The health of your starter. The level of the bread dough's organic acids. The complex relationships over time between levain, dough, fermentation, and proofing.

If your starter is always strongly acidic smelling, you can de-acidify your starter by using a high feeding ratio (e.g., 1:5:5 or 1:10:10) or by doing a few rounds of “peak-to-peak” feeding – discarding and feeding as soon as the starter peaks.

If you over-ferment the dough you run the risk of the gluten structure degrading and the loaf turning into a puddle of goo before your eyes, never to be retrieved and destined for the bin.

Splash some water over the top of your bread, just enough to become slightly damp. Place the loaf in a 250°F oven for 5 to 10 minutes. Watch it closely and remove it when warm. Too long in the oven and you'll get dried-out toast.