May 12, 2016 - 6:58am
Tartine Country bread proofing container
A few weeks ago I made a half recipe of the Tartine bread and proofed the dough for 4 hours in a smallish square plastic container and I got great results, including a really nicely risen loaf.
Last week I made the full recipe and proofed the dough in the bowl of a large salad spinner. My proofing time was a bit longer (6 hours or so) and there was tons of activity including large bubbles. My loaves came out tasting fine with pretty good crumb but they were much flatter.
so my question is, was the proofing container too big (does it make a difference?) or was the proofing time too long?
or both?
thanks in advance!
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It's very unlikely that the container had anything to do with it.
The longer proofing and/or shaping would more likely be the culprits.
The shape of the container used for the bulk ferment really has no impact on the oven spring/crumb of the final loaves. Depending on how much bread I'm making I will perform the bulk fermentation in a very very large (15 qt) stainless steel mixing bowl, or a 2 quart straight sided Camaro, or a salad bowl. It really makes no difference, as long as you are able to get your hands in there to do your stretching and folding for dough development.
Flat loaves (aka, poor oven spring) are generally a result of either over-proofing, or over-handling of the dough resulting in de-gassing, or just general shaping technique.
If you are new to sourdough baking you'll probably find that this happens more often than not until you put in a fair amount of practice. I'm 2 1/2 years in, and my loaves sometimes come out flat. Especially at this time of year when it is warm and 15 minutes can make the difference between a flat loaf and a beautiful loaf. But it always tastes good with butter!