Oven Spring and Slashing
Hello! Sorry if I make a lot of silly mistakes, I'm new here (although I have been lurking for a while :P)
I've been experimenting a great deal with oven spring recently, and I think I'm starting to get some results, but I'm a bit confused by a loaf that is in the oven right now...
It's a 70% hydration white loaf (with 15g honey per 500g white flour) and I'll do my best to describe the baking process.
I mixed it up last night and left it for first prove for two hours or so, then shaped, put it into a tin, and retarded it in the fridge over night. My oven was heating (at 250 centigrade) for an hour before I put it in, and I slashed it with a freshly sharpened Sabatier. As soon as I put it in I turned the oven down to about 215 (it's a fan oven) and added some water to the oven.
I came back 20 minutes later to take it out the tin (I do this for all my loaf tin breads halfway through baking) and found that although there had been some oven spring, the slash hadn't 'expanded' at all (e.g. instead of fresh crust bursting out, it was just an ugly scar on the top of the loaf).
Does anyone have any idea why this might be?