New to Baking: Can I get some feedback on my loaf?
Hello, excited to join this community. I've thoroughly enjoyed reading through other posts and learning from everyone here!
The last picture is after cutting the top off one of the halves and looking at the crumb on the bottom and under the cutoff top.
I'm new to baking and have been baking a two or three loaves a week. I am loving the hobby. To start, I am working my way through the Flour Water Salt Yeast book.
This loaf is 78% hydration, 25% whole wheat flour, no pre-ferments, 3% commerical yeast, 2.2% salt. I did a 4-4.5 hour bulk fermentation at room temperature and an 1 hour proof at room temperature. I am using the Cambro tubs to roughly tell when the loaf double or triples. I am monitoring temperatures and mostly staying around the optimal ranges. I try to judge the final proof by the finger dent test, but I am still learning how to judge that
Mainly I am wondering: can I achieve a better crumb with the basic one day process? I find that it isn't as open as a lot of other pictures that I see. Also my outer crust appears to be lacking in appearance, and I am yet to achieve a good ear.
I definitely need to improve my scoring technique, but I am not sure how to go about that other than practice. On this loaf, the razor got caught up in one or two places on an air bubbles as I was making the cut.
Any feedback or advice is greatly appreciated. Thank you!
Did you really do/mean 3 % dry yeast, or .3% dry yeast?
.3 % dry yeast is too little for 5 to 5.5 hours total ferment/proof time.
And 3% seems too much for 5 to 5.5 hours total ferment/proof time.
Just guessing/estimating here, but .8% to 1.5% would sound more in line for that time frame, and that also depends on what your room temp is, and the intitial temp of the ingredients. Sorry that I can't get more specific than that.
Oh haha good catch! I don't know what I was thinking. I did 0.4% yeast!
Though most of the recipes I've been trying come straight out of FWSY, this is the one recipe I tried from online.
Looks good to me. Maybe a bit more preferment time.
"Open crumb" to me is a fad. It does nothing for flavor. Where real bread is made, for example Germany, France and Italy, open crumb is not a sought-after feature. I don't strive for this in my bread.
First, a lot of what contributes to the openness of the crumb is how you handle and shape the dough. Those skills only come with time, repetition and gradually learning how to handle dough gently, yet with authority. No shortcuts, no book learning can give you that. Second, 78% hydration is high. It’s in ciabatta range. You can work with doughs with a much lower hydration, say 68-70%, and get lovely, open crumb. And they are much, much more easy to work with if you are just getting started. Take a look at some of the pics of Jeffrey Hamelman’s breads in “Bread: A Baker’s Book of Techniques & Recipes.” Many of those beautiful open crumbs come from 68% hydration doughs.