February 29, 2020 - 6:20am
Sourdough Bread has Large Air Pocket
Hello Guys,
My loaf the other day came out with one large air tunnel throughout instead of smaller air pockets. I have made quite a few sourdough loaves and this has never happened before - could this be a proofing issue? Note: it is slightly underbaked if that has any effect on the dough.
Any advice welcome!
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It is underproofed. Give it more time on the bulk ferment or use warmer water and make sure the dough rises during bulk fermentation.
Michael, when we see crumb like the above, common consensus says, over proofed.
Can you explain why the huge holes form among predominantly dense cell structure? Common sense might consider under proofed dough to be dense all over. Not enough gas to expand any cells. But in the above image the gas must have been present to pressurize a few cells, causing them to expand and enlarge.
I have always been curious to understand this.
Danny
there are different densities found in the crumb. This is dense crumb with round bubbles and a few large gas bubbles that got bigger in the oven. Much like a cross section of dough as it appears about half way thru a bulk rise. When the dough is overproofed, the matrix breaks down and cannot support the crumb so it rips and falls to the bottom of the hollow making a dense area about half an inch above the lower crust. The crust here has good color, a sign it wasn't overproofed as overproofed crust tend to be pale. (Ignore the flour.).
Another cause could be lack of salt in the dough or air trapped while folding or shaping but this looks more like the bulk rise was cut short. Baking sort of "freeze-framed" a moment during what would have been the bulk rise. Look closely at the bubbles in the crumb. Not the big ones but the little ones. They are almost all very very round. As the crumb fills with gas, these round bubbles take on more organic fluid shapes. Overproofed crumb will have an abundance of amoeba shaped gas bubbles if they don't go flat. So the range of bubble shapes goes from pin points to round to oval to globs to deflated as dough ferments.
This can easily be checked. All one has to do is take a big sharp knife to the rising dough and make a quick slash into it to look at the air cells forming inside the dough. One should see lots of cut air pockets all over the place all different sizes. Round slashed bubbles everywhere. There should be a few big ones too but they tend to rise and be close to the surface so they get divided or popped when shaping. If there are only a few big bubbles and no scattering of smaller ones, slap the cut edges back together and give the yeast more time. Bulk rise should continue.
I just had a disastrous bake that looked exactly like the one here, after months of really beautiful, perfectly proofed boules, and this is the best explanation I have found after hours of looking online. There is no question that what happened to mine - glossy, gummy texture, large tunnels, poor and lopsided oven spring - are symptoms of being underproofed, despite the ambient conditions (temperature, humidity) and typical timeframes being consistent with earlier, more successful bakes.
What I suspect my fatal mistake to be was only taking the dormant starter out of the fridge the morning of making the levain, only feeding it once (I thought I was pushing it, but it the starter seemed to spring up ok and the levain was bubbly). I did everything else exactly as usual, but the results were really disappointing. I began to wonder if the issue is that I simply didn't give enough time/energy to the starter for the actual numbers of active yeast to get where they needed to be? Anyway, for my next bake I'm going to baby that starter for 2 - 3 days before I try making bread with it. We'll see.
will reflect the condition of the starter when put into the fridge and the fridge temperature. You want to make sure the fermenting starter is mature enough to defend itself (enough acid) yet have enough food to last the duration of the chilling. This takes a little experimentation or prepping the starter with more than one feed cycle before use. The starter yeast will be slowed down but slowly feeding. The bacteria growth slows down more but they produce a little acid when cooling down.
If not sure of the starter after chilling let it warm up before evaluating its current condition. Cold starters are stiff, give off little aroma and can taste more sour than they would be when going thru a full feeding cycle at warm room temp. if fermentation is very slow in the fridge, it might need to mature more before feeding or making a levain.
Thank you for your help!
I also would say it's underproofed and hasn't had enough stretch & folds to distribute the air pockets more evenly.
I also would say it's underproofed and hasn't had enough stretch & folds to distribute the air pockets more evenly.
The big hole I think is created by steam, much like the pocket of pita bread. Your starter is weak or you need to give the bulk more time.
Hi Mina! If you've made many sourdough loaves and this has never happened before, I would be curious if you remember doing anything differently, or if the environment were different than when you previously baked (from your kitchen to the outside weather, it all affects sourdough, apparently). You might find your answer there (I'm curious why you underbaked this loaf, too). Also, if I were to help diagnose what happened, I would need more information from you: how was your starter doing when you inoculated the dough, how long did you let bulk fermentation go, what was the temp in your kitchen, how old was your flour, was it really sticky when you shaped, was it slack when you shaped, etc. Just looking at the pic and making guesses would be like diagnosing a disease based on a single photograph and not getting any other information from or about the patient. That said, if I were to hazard a guess, I would say it *looks* (without further info from you) overproofed or that an air pocket was made during shaping that the yeast took advantage of or the oven heat expanded. I say overproofed because The Sourdough Journey video on YouTube did an experiment where he under- and over-proofed and he examined the crumb: overproofed had dense crumb with big, tunnel holes and big bubbles dispersed along the top and bottom; underproofed had big (not tunnel) bubbles along the top with dense crumb on the bottom. If you are able and willing, perhaps experiment with under- and over-proofing two loaves and then seeing the effect on the crumb (I would love to see the results and I might try my own experiment soon).