Sourdough pan bread.. darn thing looks weird!
I know this topic has been covered before, but I can't seem to find an answer to my particular problem. You all have helped me go from flat, blah bread a couple months ago to some really fantastic stuff, so I thought maybe I could reach out to you again. All I'm looking to do is to get my sourdough bread formed in a pan, to look like my yeasted pan bread.. i.e. domed on the top with that "muffin-like" side profile when sliced. What I'm getting now has two problems.. the sourdough rises fine in the pan, but it doesn't dome up on top.. it rises level and does not have any oven spring, so the finished, baked bread looks like a brick. It tastes great, but it's a little too dense from lack of expansion, and my kids don't like the way it looks. I think the lack of oven spring is due to the pyrex glass I'm forming this in.. and that's insulating the bread from the heat of the oven, killing my 'spring'. My free-form hearth breads spring fantastic, jumping right off the stone, so I'm a little mystified over that.. In addition, during the rising time of several hours, there are huge bubble forming on the top, which make the bread look like some alien life form when baked.. any ideas? I've tried different hydrations between 66 and 60% to try and keep the frothy bubbles down, but no luck with that.