Hi Karla! It could be a couple things: the activity of your starter, degree of proof, shaping, and scoring.
If your starter is not active enough, it may not have provided enough leavening to your bread, hence, denseness.
If you did not proof the bread sufficiently, the loaf may not have had enough time to rise/fill with gas (airiness). Additionally, it is possible you may have overproofed the bread, and so it collapsed.
Shaping is essentially how the baker gathers all the various air bubbles (think of your loaf as a big bunch of balloons). If the shape is unwieldy, not gathered tightly enough, the loaf can expand unevenly (and collapse).
Depth and degree of score is important for encouraging the loaf to grow tall in the oven. If you scored improperly, the loaf may have been left to spread outwards, not upwards.
This is all just scratching the surface—for some in-depth reading, check out: The bottom of this article ("Why is my loaf coming out flat"?): https://food52.com/blog/24907-how-to-make-bread
And The Perfect Loaf for guides on starter maintenance, proofing, shaping, scoring: https://www.theperfectloaf.com/guides/
Can you give us some more details, such as was the crumb dense or gummy when you cut into the bread? Did it rise well but then deflate at any point? Stuff like that.
The bread is very dense. Not gummy but very heavy like when you make bread with 100% whole wheat flour. Maybe my expectations are off.?The bread rose but not as much as when I make bread with yeast. I am using organic all purpose flour and my starter is made with organic whole wheat flour. I live in the San Francisco area and sourdough bread you eat here is quite sour but has a light texture.
Coral's answer touches on a lot of reasons your bread may have turned out dense (and unfortunately there are a lot of possibilities). But if your bread didn't rise much (during the bulk/proving steps?), that indicates something off with your fermentation and/or gluten development. First things that come to mind with fermentation are 1) starter wasn't active enough. Your starter should be airy and spongy looking before you start baking with it - a lot of people like the float test. 2) Your starter was active enough, but maybe the dough just didn't get enough time. Sourdough often takes longer to rise. It's not unheard of for a sourdough to take 4-6h to finish the first rise, and be prepared for 6ish hours if it's cool in your kitchen. 3) gluten development - any method of autolyse, kneading, and/or stretching and folding the dough should help. The windowpane test should give you an idea of your gluten development.
If I'm misunderstanding, and you're referring to the bread not getting much oven spring, then the info above might still apply, but in addition some of the things Coral mentioned (over proving, poor shaping, etc) might be at play. Your expectations are not off, sourdough can make an airy, light loaf just as well as regular yeast. The resources Coral listed are very good, so just keep at it!
5 Comments
If your starter is not active enough, it may not have provided enough leavening to your bread, hence, denseness.
If you did not proof the bread sufficiently, the loaf may not have had enough time to rise/fill with gas (airiness). Additionally, it is possible you may have overproofed the bread, and so it collapsed.
Shaping is essentially how the baker gathers all the various air bubbles (think of your loaf as a big bunch of balloons). If the shape is unwieldy, not gathered tightly enough, the loaf can expand unevenly (and collapse).
Depth and degree of score is important for encouraging the loaf to grow tall in the oven. If you scored improperly, the loaf may have been left to spread outwards, not upwards.
This is all just scratching the surface—for some in-depth reading, check out:
The bottom of this article ("Why is my loaf coming out flat"?): https://food52.com/blog/24907-how-to-make-bread
And The Perfect Loaf for guides on starter maintenance, proofing, shaping, scoring: https://www.theperfectloaf.com/guides/
Good luck!
If I'm misunderstanding, and you're referring to the bread not getting much oven spring, then the info above might still apply, but in addition some of the things Coral mentioned (over proving, poor shaping, etc) might be at play. Your expectations are not off, sourdough can make an airy, light loaf just as well as regular yeast. The resources Coral listed are very good, so just keep at it!