Bench flour and bubbles under the gluten sheet
My understanding of baking is slowly improving but there are two questions that I'm at the moment most struggling with and was wondering whether anybody here could help me get some insight on these:
- I started out with Laurel's kitchen's Loaf for learning. In that recipe they tell you not to use bench flour so that you can get a better feel for the dough plus avoid the risk of adjusting the flour amount too much. That sounded reasonable. So after I switched to BBA, I've been doing the same. Problem is wvery time the dough sticks to my hands quite badly. It gets better the more the dough is developed but it stays sticky all the time (also after fermentation). When I tried to add bench flour, it was worked into the dough and back to being sticky within several kneads. Is it me or the dough which is to be blamed here?
- When I shape my dough, I always have bubbles trapped right under my gluten sheet. How do I prevent these?
Oh, I made challah for the first time today. I know I baked it too dark but I think it is still quite ok for my tiny oven. Next time I'll have to scale down even alittle further.