A forum for bread baking challenges.
Hi everyone,
I've recently started baking and am having trouble getting those dramatic oopen crumb and ovensprings.
I used 100% hard whole wheat and sifted some of the the bran out of around 800g. The rest of the 200g was not sifted.
From memory, I think it was something around 89% hydration (890g)
Levain (225g)
Salt (25g)
A pinch of diastatic malt
My apartment is around 75 degrees.
Hi all, I just made 2 loaves of sourdough and while they look like they had good oven-spring and have height and scoring definition, the dough itself is very close textured with no random holes :((, I created the dough yesterday night, bulk fermented at RT then popped it in bannetons in the fridge for a retardation for the final proof for about 8 hours. I baked them and they looked great but when I cut into them, I found a very close textured pretty disappointing loaf... Please offer advice on what I'm doing wrong!!!
Ok... I am a lucky lad. I have been gifted a lot of baking equipment from my Grandfather who is downsizing his possessions. Part of what I have received is 5 bannetons of different sizes.
How do I determine what range of dough weights are ideal for the different bannetons? I'd love to write on the outside of them with a recommended range. I am guessing there is some rule of thumb I can use.
I keep seeing people carve beautiful designs into their bread, like the bread is a blank canvas waiting for the deft touch of an artist.
UGHHHH. Everytime I try to score it sticks, and if I confidently rip the razor across the bread things get worse.
There have been two loaves where the scoring was crazy easy. They seemed to have an easy to cut skin formed on the dough. Maybe I had put more flour on their bannetons.
I even fabricated my own lame (see photo) and ordered the sharpest razor blades on the market to adorn my lame. Still no dice.
Please help.
Hi everyone,
Long time follower, first time poster! I'm Trish, been a chef in Dubai for 6 years and I'm attempting to build up my bread skills. But I feel very defeated.
I have made 2 starters one with plain strong white flour, one that's a mix of both strong white and whole wheat.
Both are developed and float in the float test.
But there's this huge whole in my bread and it blows out the bottom of my loaf. This is my second attempt.
The good news is that the breads are tasting good and getting eaten, and the white bread from the store, in its plastic bag, is languishing away in its corner of the breadbox, largely unused. In fact, this loaf got cut open before I was up this morning! :-)
The bad news is that I keep making the same mistake. Overfermenting. Dabrownman, I'm glad that Lucy is not here to chastise her most unworthy apprentice 4th class, who just can't seem to learn!
This post references the following video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnxiawZoL4A%C2%A0%C2%A0
Hamelman (the master King Arthur baker in the video) says something to the effect of, "The dough feels a little dry, so I am going to add some water."
As I start to play around with different hydration levels, I realize that too dry and too wet are kind of nebulous concepts. I mean... Is it too dry? or is it just a low hydration recipe?
I'm pretty sure I let the levain ferment longer than necessary on this one (first time working with a bran levain, I wasn't sure when it was ready), so both the bulk fermentation and the proof got cut short when I thought I started to see signs of overfermentation.
The loaf feels heavy in my hand, but the slices don't seem heavy in the eating. I wondered if the bigger holes than last time could be "fool's crumb", but the denser parts are not at all gummy, although they are nice and moist. Thoughts on that?
Any imput on decreasing amount of salt used in sourdough bread that doesn't have a negative affect.
