My first loaf... Who is sleeping in that cave??
Overproofed & not scored...
Well, this was my first try at baking bread in March 07. Finally, it was time to try something thicker than pizza, I had time on my hands and a mud oven I could play with. Pictures show simple French Bread loaves before, during and after baking in the mud oven we have in our back yard. I can tell you that I really don't have any experience with wood-fired ovens. I did use the oven a bunch of times and then I stopped after a couple of failures, mainly due to not-hot-enough oven or overproofed loaves, i.e., lack of good timing. In any case, few times I had good success...
I was impressed with the ovenspring of my first loaves, except for the scored one. That one scored loaf just poofed down before it went into the oven, so I was naturally scared to score the other ones. In the oven, you can see the difference between the scored loaf (on the left) and the other non-scored loaves. Besides the nice caramelization, the non-scored loaves had big caves. You can see threads of gelatinized dough connecting the crumb to the roof. Upon some inquiry, I found out that my loaves were probably overproofed, obviously not scored to release that extra CO2, and not handled so gently during shaping. For my first try though, my family and I loved how they tasted with a hint of the wood smoke. The whole baking process was a nice weekend event for us... This is how I got sucked into bread baking. It's fun. I should start playing again with the wood-fired oven this summer.
Cheers,
Hazim