BUTTS!
Hello there,
I've been making sourdough for about a year and a half now - with varying results. Due to having much more time at the moment I've been doing things a bit differently and using the Bake With Jack method that takes around a day to do before putting in the fridge overnight (before I was trying to do a quick recipe that I could make when I got home from work and then bake in the morning).
So, I've really been enjoying the Bake With Jack method (I am using the recipe from The Sourdough School overnight loaf) - I feel like I'm really starting to get a feel for the dough and when it's 'right' etc - everything goes to plan, it looks lush when I pop it out of the banneton in the morning and it's firm enough for me to do some good scoring, then I put it in the oven and pray for NO BUTTS! Unfortunately, I got double butts this morning and I'm just trying to figure out why.
I've never had this issue with my breads before, only since using this method. I thought I'd cracked it when I started making a dough and realised I didn't have enough flour, so I decided to make little rolls instead so I could practice shaping - I put them in at a slightly lower temperature and they came out great, so my thinking was that my oven was too hot and the crusts were setting before the bread had time to expand. For my next bread I decided to bake at 220 for 15 minutes and the rest at 180 and voila, a beautiful loaf was born.
Skip forwards to today and it's back to butt mode. Is it just down to my seams? I try to properly pinch them together as I worry that they are weak, but maybe they are just still too weak? Or maybe the bottom of the loaf is just getting more steam than the top? I am baking them on a baking tray with holes in it, I used to put a super deep cake tin over my round boules to keep the steam in but can't do that with the oval banneton. I don't really want to buy an oval dutch oven when I know I can produce well risen loaves without one.
Just wondering if anyone has any ideas? I've got to give one of those top two as a birthday present today! hahahah.
Here's another one of the butts: