Crust colour
In another thread, I read that having too much starter in a bread will mean too little sugars for a good browning. I recently rewrote my french bread recipe for using grams instead of volume, and I increased the amount of starter. This has helped get a much nicer, sour flavour out of my dough, but I´ve noticed the bread has recently been very pale compared to before, and not as crusty.
The obvious question here, would this be because of there being too much starter, or too little sugar? I know this could also probably be over proofing. Is there any way I could fix this without losing the sour flavour?
My recipe is:
80g Sourdough
120g Water
6g Sugar
6g Salt
180g Flour
Note that this is for a very small loaf, when I make a normal size loaf I double the recipe.
(I have recently been lowering water to 110g, as I´ve been having problems kneading the 66% dough)
I don;t think it is a residual sugar issue, it is most likely that the temperature is too low..
The problem I have with believing that is that I have always used the same setting, 400 degrees, and when I first started if anything I kept the oven door open longer than I do now, so I would think that it was cooler then, though I may be adding more water into the oven than I did before. I never really measured how much I put in when I was first starting out. I´m about to put a small loaf in now, I´ll try lowering the amount of water.
Another curious question related to that, what effect would having steam on the bread through the whole bake have, as opposed to only for the beginning? (I hear alot of people say to remove the steam after however many minutes and finish baking without it)