Pullman bread caved in on top
I have been baking Pullman sandwich loaves for some time - my kids are pretty much hooked on sandwich press grilled sandwiches and free standing sourdough breads don't cut it for this. More often than not (but not always, by all means) bread comes out looking pretty good and square out of the oven, then the top caves in while the bread is cooling. I cannot identify a pattern to this, sometimes it doesn't happen, probably 2 out of 3 times it does.
Needless to say, when the sandwich press cuts the slices diagonally, one section comes out bigger than the other and the jutting "points" don't get any cheese without custom carving the slices to fit this particular shape. It also bothers me because I don't believe it's called for and I am sure can be avoided with proper technique.
Can somebody point me in the right direction? The bread is a simple yeast based bread, enriched with milk, sugar, and butter. I use an Italian type 1 bread flour with ca. 13% protein content. Mixing in 50% of stronger (and whiter) flour (14+% protein) didn't seem to make much difference.
Another person had the same problem here: Does a Pullman Loaf Usually "settle" on top? | The Fresh Loaf. The solution was to increase the size of the loaf and remove the top of the pan several minutes before the end of baking. Another suggestion to help with this problem was to invert the loaf for the final cooling. If you perform an internet search on the phrase Pullman loaf collapse, you'll find other suggestions.
I was thinking about increasing the loaf size, but perhaps I haven't increased enough. I'll give both your suggestions a try.
Prior to writing this, I didn't find anything very helpful on the Internet, because it hadn't occurred to me to search so specifically, for Pullman bread collapse; I was looking just for collapsing bread and there were few helpful suggestions.
This issue had been baffling me for a long time. I bake plenty of sourdough breads, at least three times a week, from Tartine-type breads to heavy German style whole grain ryes, and nothing like this has ever happened, other than for these Pullman loaves.
I have read that you should remove the loaf from the Pullman pan as soon as it comes out of the oven. Otherwise, moisture moving out from the interior gets trapped at the surface and causes a sunken effect.
I don't think it's a good idea to go fussing with the hot lid during the baking cycle if you can avoid it.
I haven't used my Pullman pan very often yet, but so far no collapses.
TomP
Thanks, but I do remove the bread from the pan right away and usually cover it with a tea towel while it cools down, so that's not it. My Pullman pan opens very easily, so I don't expect any issue with pulling the cover off while hot. I have read that Pullman loaves tend to pull in on the sides, this has never happened to me so far; just the top collapses from a quarter to nearly half an inch relative to the sides.
I'll try increasing the loaf size, as suggested by Petek above and maybe turning the bread upside down after I take it out of the pan; I just hope this will not make the bottom collapse for a change,. I have also experimented with varied proofing rates, from starting to bake with the dough substantially below the top of the pan up to it pressing fully on the cover, but this didn't seem to make much difference either way.
Too bad, that would have been easy. I guess that increasing the dough weight, as you are planning to do, would be the easiest thing to try.
Otherwise, it might be a little overproofed, or it needs some more time baking without the lid to let more moisture escape. That would fit in with the loaf looking flat until it cools.
I think it looks excellent!
I have been researching, for quite some time, bread that pulls in on the sides--both Pullman and lidless Pullman loaves. I haven't found the definitive reason, but most solutions involve lowering the hydration rate of the dough. However, I see pictures of square loaves that are perfect, with a higher hydration rate than I use. The other most common suggestion is longer baking, perhaps at a lower temperature. Removing the loaf from the pan and setting it back in the oven has also been suggested. I think this might tie in with the sort of pan that is used--whether it is black or a lighter metal, or shiny.
In all my research I have come across only one site that instructed turning the Pullman pan on its side during the last part of baking, then turning it onto its other side--say, 5 min & 5 min during the last ten.
Oddly enough, the last loaf I baked for an extra 5 mins "keyholed" worse than the one before that had baked less. I even had a loaf pull in on the sides when the loaf was shaped the Japanese way by rolling up smaller sections and placing them sideways in the pan. That collapse really surprised me.
Anyway, good luck and please let us know if you find a solution.
Moe C, I really think there must be an explanation to this mistery and I am surprised nobody has found it yet. The more I hear about this problem the more I think that this is somehow people specific: it happens to some of us and to some it never happens at all, even for the same recipes. Then I would think this would have to be connected to some sort of specific combination of oven/flour/pan, probably in this order. I'll try some fixes suggested above and we'll see. But even if they help, this will not explain why some people have to turn the loaf upside down for several minutes in the oven, while others don't and their bread comes out perfect.
It would seem that Pullman bread is such a simple and easy recipe, especially compared to multiple preferment sourdoughs, baguettes, Panettones and the like, and yet it only goes to show that baking after all is an art!