I don't know whether this is considered cross-posting or not, but I just posted this in reply to a responder at the baking ng. But I want to post it to this bread group to ask if a couple of other things could've gone wrong to make the little hard lumps in my dough.
Partial posting to Baking ng: "I had a bread-dough failure. I thought I'd take a shortcut and not cut the pate fermentee into
10 pieces because the kitchenaid does such a thorough job of mixing. But to my dismay the dough when kneaded had multitudes of pieces of hard-flour/dough throughout. I thought I'd try to save it and knead it awhile because the dough wasn't up to the 77 degrees, so I decided to use my Silipat ... "
Re: Reinhart's Recipe (p. 170 French Bread made with Pate Fermentee) I'm thinking perhaps these lumps might have also been caused by me doing this:
1) I added 1 teaspoon King Arthur
2) He says: "Add the water, stirring until everything comes together." - I added all at once.
3) The other day when I made this recipe, the dough was too dry, using the 6 ounces of water, and it was the same today, so I measured out another 1 ounce, but added only a partial amount, but each time I added it, it may a slurry around the mixer bowl.
4) The above reason, that I did not cut up the pate fermentee into 10 pieces before mixing, could this have caused the lumps.
Pick and choose: I can't think of anything else that might have caused these lumps, but I recall I've seen them in my bread dough before and the bread had little white dry spots after it had been baked. Not a real pretty sight, but edible; I would rather not have them.
Any help welcome, Thanks so much, Dee