Uneven oven spring
Hi.
I have spent the last couple of weeks trying to master the Tartine basic country bread by making it once per day. To make this fit my schedule, I have made some modifications, which I detail below. First, I will describe a persistent problem that I have been having.
At first, my loaves were very flat. I eventually realized that I was overproofing, and began proofing for shorter. Now, my loaves spring much more in the oven, but they do so unevenly. While the whole loaf puffs noticably, the center springs up more than the edges, creating a slightly bell-like shape. I would like the loaf to have slices that are well-rounded, like this one. However, I simply cannot seem to get nicely puffed-out, rounded sides like those in the picture. Perhaps related is that my loaves do not hold their height very well when I remove them from the bowl in which I proof them. Any advice with these problems would be much appreciated
To aid in debugging, my process is the following:
Ingredients:
500g AP flour
375g water
15g levain
10g salt
20:00 -- mix dough, autolyze for ~40 minutes
20:40 -- add salt, then do first fold
Repeat folds every 30 minutes until midnight.
Leave the dough out on the counter to bulk ferment over night
By morning, the dough is bubbly and light. I preshape, then rest for 15--20 minutes, then shape the dough. Finally, I put it into a bowl for the final proof and refrigerate it.
19:00 -- take dough out of fridge and bake
My refrigerator is very cold, so there is usually very little perceptible change to the dough between when I put it into the fridge and when I take it out. However, the bulk fermentation usually gets the dough to increase in volume by roughly 60--90%, so it does not seem to need (according to my inexpert senses) to proof for very long before it gets put into the oven.
I have one additional, related question. How much more volume, relative to immediately after I mix the dough, should I expect a sourdough that is fully proofed to have? Tartine 1 does not give much detail on this. I know about the poke test, but it is less reliable with refrigerated dough, as far as I can tell (although if I'm wrong, I would love to hear, since then I could test for readiness).
Thank you.
I am not an expert baker but I've made a lot of successful tartine loaves. The thing that strikes me particularly that is different from my process is your very long bulk proof. You don't say how warm your kitchen is overnight but I find around 3 hours at 21/22C is enough for me. Is it possible that you are over-proofing?
The ambient termerature is usually 73--77F. I do the bulk fermentation on the ccounter because nothing happens if I try to do it in the fridge (I've tried) due to the fridge temerature. To account for the much longer bulk fermentation, I add much less leaven than the Tartine recipe, which would normally use 100g of leaven for the quantitie listed here, rather than the 15g that i use, and have a much shorter effective final proof (since dough does not change much in my fridge).
A couple of days ago, I tried cutting off the rise of the dough at around 1:00 am, but it was not at all bubbly and yielded a very strange loaf with dense crumb punctured by gaping holes, a lot like this one. I took this to mean that the fermentation time for that loaf had been inadequate. Perhaps this could have been fixed with a longer proof though.
Thank you for any advice.
I imagine you've been making these changes to make your baking fit in with your working day and I'm not experienced enough to comment on those, although lots of people here might help with that. My instinct would be to choose a few non working days to get comfortable with the recipe as written and learn how the dough looks and feels when it is producing the bread you want before making your adjustments. I find I get confused if I change too many variables at once. I'm in the UK where we don't have AP flour, for instance, so I would worry that it might not have the strength of bread flour. But maybe a real expert could be more helpful. Good luck, it's a fabulous loaf and worth investing the time to get it working.