The Fresh Loaf

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The perfect 'Fools Crumb'

not.a.crumb.left's picture
not.a.crumb.left

The perfect 'Fools Crumb'

I set myself the target whether I can produce a really good example of a 'Fool's crumb' with all the

features that Trevor describes in his book.

Not really - I tried an experiment with Champlains to use extended cold bulk fermentation in my wine cooler overnight, shape in the morning and totally misjudged the 2nd proof!

But, rather than only share the good, here you also get the 'ugly' and this might be useful for someone learning. Certainly when I started off, I did not know what underproofed loaves looked in comparism to overproofed etc.

So here we go the 'Fool's Crumb' tutorial:

Sloped sides of the loaf seem to be a symptom and you can get an 'ear'......

Inside the typical big holes with dense area around it...

If only I would have waited longer.......my resolution is now to to finish reading 'The Bread Baker's Apprentice' during the holidays in Cornwall and then try more the cold bulk fermentation as per Peter Reinhart with the iced water and ambient proofing...     Kat

Comments

Ru007's picture
Ru007

I think this will be really helpful for people who need help figuring out their crumb structure, me included!! 

How did it taste? Was it just as good or could you tell that it was under proofed? 

Ru

not.a.crumb.left's picture
not.a.crumb.left

bad and we made panini out of it with lots of toasted cheese and chorizo!

Thank you for your post and I felt it is important to also share where we go wrong as this is so much part of the

bread making journey and not just ALL THOSE amazing loaves that you can see on IG. I felt inspired by an amazing baker in Germany , who wrote about

the timing of one of his regular loaves and responded to me saying that the 'timing' is not always spot on with him either..I felt that was a very honest thing to say...

I work with children and for every success there is some failure that then required resilience to get up again and to try again...Isn't bread making character building....Ha, Ha....Kat

Benito's picture
Benito

Thanks for sharing this photo Kat.

Benny

not.a.crumb.left's picture
not.a.crumb.left

and Dan is spreading the word about your amazing crackers which I must look into.... Kat

BreadLee's picture
BreadLee

Thank you! Great post!  We never stop learning or making mistakes no matter how much bread we've baked.