May 15, 2009 - 11:04am
Did I overbake this?
I baked a rosemary olive oil bread. The dark crust looks awesome to me although I prefer it a bit lighter. However, considering that even the scoring areas are dark, I think I overbaked it. What do you thin? The internal temperature just made it to 205F. Smells awsesome and I think it'll taste fine, but I'm wondering.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2069/3533386475_31b8d89e40.jpg
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How did it taste?
Hi DrPr,
Looking at the picture it's hard for me to say if it's overbaked, but what I can see is that it's pretty and nicely scored. Very roughly speaking, an artisanal loaf is usually done when it achieves an internal temperature around 200 dF, plus of minus 8 or 10 degrees. (An instant-read thermometer can be really helpful here.)
If you took a picture of the crumb of this loaf it would be a lot easier to determine if it was overbaked: overbaking gives rise to a thicker crust, one you can tell just by eyeballing that it should have come out of the oven sooner.
The interior of your loaf can't get much hotter than 210 dF, and once it reaches that limit, it's just the crust that gets hotter, and ultimately that will thicken the crust and/or char it.
Crust color while baking can be misleading. If the crust looks deep golden brown, the interior could still be 170 dF, i.e. underbaked. This could result from an oven that was too hot for too long. A lot of bakers start the oven hotter and turn it down during the bake. The hot start is helpful in getting good good oven spring. But somewhere in the middle of the bake it helps to turn the temperature down to make sure the crust doesn't overbake.
So, again, it helps to have a thermometer to gauge interior temperature against crust color, to figure out how to get to the finish line with the best-looking and tasting bread.
Hope this helps!
David
Thank you both for your comments. I don't know how the crumb came out because a friend happily took it home with her, so I'll ask about that and the thickness of the crust. Thank you for the information on overbaking- that was immensely helpful. As for the scoring, that's the best scoring and shaping I've ever done on a boule, so I was sad at the thought that I may have overbaked it. Oh well- every loaf is a learning experience.
A thermometer is really needed to tell how done the bread is, and then you need to taste it and analyze the crumb. I've had very deeply browned crusts with gummy crumbs on the bottom (highly hydrated dough), so you just can't always tell.
I don't have a fancy digital instant read, just an inexpensive analog thermometer, and it works fine.
Very pretty loaf! You did use a thermometer to check the temp and I feel pretty confident in saying that at 205 deg it was not overcooked. I don't think David and Janknitz read that part.
Betty
The reason a hobbyist baker makes bread is to please themselves and their family.
If you and your family liked it, it was perfect. No matter what anyone else says.
In general, Europeans like darker crusts than Americans. The reason is that most of the bread's flavor is in the crust. And getting to a darker color brings out the flavor. At least, up to a point. Europeans like stronger flavors than Americans, over all.
Professor Calvel once said that you can't burn bread. I know from personal experience that is not true, however, the point remains that most people underbake their bread. He suggested that you give your bread 5 minutes more than the last time you baked it. And repeat that a few times. Until you go too far and then back off a bit.
Please note, I didn't suggest anyone burn their bread, just that they try to unlock its full potential.
A few final thoughts. Browning is a matter of oven temperature. Getting the bread done all the way through requires time in the oven. And the two are related. If your bread is darker than you'd like and the crumb isn't done, you can cover it with some foil... and bake at a lower temperature the next time. If the bread is done inside and the outside is paler than you'd like, you can crank up the temperature and leave it in the oven a few more minutes. And next time, crank up the oven from the git-go.
Hope this helps,
Mike
I've learned (the hard way) that the two most indespensible tools in my bread making arsenal are the scale and the instant read thermometer. You can't even begin to assess what adjustments need to be made in a recipe without those two tools.
Well, maybe my grandma could. But she could also cook in the oven of a wood fired stove by "guessing" at what the oven temperature was. I ain't that talented. ;-}
I went to college in another millenium, and I am sure the oven in my apartment was from a still earlier millenium.
Somehow what I later found was a European oven wound up in my Huntsville, TX apartment. And instead of having degrees on its dial, it had numbers. I, II, III, IIII, and IIIII, if memory serves. It's been a few years. Not quite thousands, but a few years.
That was pre-internet. Not long ago I found out that the numbers had meaning, and that I could have set the oven with some degree of confidence. Not knowing that, I looked at the flame in the oven and guessed if the temperature was OK. Amazingly enough, my baked goods came out just fine. In addition to no Internet, I was, at the time, suffering no clue. Today, all my ovens have thermometers in them because I don't trust most oven thermostats.
Anyway, you'd learn to judge your coals and your oven temperature pretty quickly. You'f learn what a 375F oven felt like when you put your hand in. You'd see how quickly water boiled when you tossed it onto the oven floor. And you'd burn a few things, but you'd learn faster than you might imagine.
Mike