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Hi - looking for some help. 

On checking this loaf after 15 mins I notice that the top crust is splitting away from the sides.

Can anybody help as to why and what I might do to stop this happening.

I like the end look but would be keen to have some input.

With thanks

Following kjknits recipe on English muffins it gives me an extremely slack dough which sticks everywhere. After proof thrower them onto a heated griddle, which is a bit too hot for them and most of them are burnt n one side. 

I guess I would increase the amount of ap flour to make it a dough like structure or use a muffins ring to hold its shape.

But this recipe is yet one of the best English muffins I've have ever had. 

We went with another multigrain white bread this week but instead of putting ground sesame and flax seeds in it we went with the 3 P’s: pistachios, prunes and pumpkin seeds.   This bread is the equivalent of 38% whole grains due to the Toadies and malts.

We decided to go with our multigrain sourdough starter instead of the SD, YW and poolish combo starter from last week and we went for the dour too by refreshing the stiff starter and then refrigerating it for 3 days before building levain and then refrigerating it for 24 hours.

The levain was a 3 stage build of: 3 hours, 3 hours till it doubled, and then 1 hour where it rose 25% before refrigerating.  The levain was allowed to come to room temperature and finish doubling, about 3 hours before it was used.  The levain came in at 20% of the total weight.

While the levain was finishing its final doubling on the counter, we began the autolyse the flour with the fig water, extra water, Toadies and malts – with the salt placed on top.  The fig water was left over from re-hydrating the figs for a bake a couple of weeks ago.  This week we have prune water for a future bake left over from re-hydrating the prunes from this bake.

Looks a little over proofed to me.

Once everything came together with a spoon at a little over 74% hydration, we did 5 minutes of slap and folds to get the gluten development started before resting the dough for 15 minutes and doing 1 more minute of slap and folds.  Normally we would do at lea1t 20 minutes of slap and folds over two sessions of 6 and 4 minutes

We decided to go with less slap and folds and 3 S&F’s to see if it opened the crumb.  We don’t think it will with all the add-ins for this bread but you never know when your apprentice gets her paws into stuff when you aren’t looking,.  The pistachios, pumpkin seeds and prunes were added at the beginning of the first and 2nd set of S&F’s. 

By the end f the 3rd set the add-ins were thoroughly incorporated.  We allowed the bread to bulk ferment for 1 hour before dividing the dough into the pieces required for the Chacon design: a central knotted roll, 4 balls and 4 snails surrounding the roll.

This bread makes fin toast with half of; a mango, nectarine and peach, some bacon, black grapes and raspberries - yummy!

After these pieces were placed in the bottom of a lightly rice floured basket I forgot to put the pumpkin seeds in first which would cause a mistake trying to glue them on later.  The remaining bulk of the dough was air shaped into a huge bialy to cover the design.  The basket was immediately placed into a used trash can liner and placed in the fridge for an 18 hour cold retard.

The dough rose well in the cold and after a peek, Lucy decided to let the dough warm up for an hour before baking it off in the mini oven at 500F with (2) of Sylvia’s steaming cups and 1/4 C of water tossed into the bottom of the oven for instant steam.

We glued the forgotten seeds on with egg wash, per my apprentice’s recommendation but we should have used water as the egg wash browned much darker than the rest of the crust.  Oh well, I really could care less and I know Lucy doesn’t care a lick either!

The lunch sandwich today was an aged white cheddar, pastrami, spicy brown mustard with caramelized; onions, mushrooms and hot peppers all melted together in the micro wave to make a fine pastrami melt.  Yummy!

After 4 minutes we turned the heat down to 475 F and at the 8 minute mark we turned it down to 450 F.  At the 15 minute mark we removed the steam and turned the oven down to 425 F, convection this time.  12 minutes later the bread hit 205 F and was deemed done and removed to the cooling rack.

The bread sprang weakly but well enough for the Chacon design to show itself and it browned up with the little blisters the mini oven is famous for putting on crusts.  But that egg wash was a mistake.  The crust didn't lose all of it's crispiness as is cooled. The crumb was open, soft, glossy and moist. It was slightly sweet and sour due to the SD, fig water and prunes.  The pistachios and pumpkin seeds were a nice chew foil to the soft crumb.  We like this bread and will have no problem devouring it. 

The rest of lunch.

Formula

I have only been seriously baking sourdough bread for about six months now with my sourdough starter which I built from scratch in January this year. Although I used to cook professionally and have worked with many bakers and pastry chefs for years, I never really make time (which I don't really have much) to explore artisan bread. Until recently, I really want my family to enjoy top quality bread every day and also for my children to know how good breads are made. I named my starter Blossom. My kids are fascinated when I let them feed my “pet” for baking, and knowing it can do “tricks” such as to make holes in a loaf of bread and to make the bread tasty.  They also know that most of the time Blossom likes to “sleep” in the fridge. :)

I’ve baked many different loaves from different books and formulas from here in the past months and my favorite bread is pain de campagne.  I was so inspired by the Overnight Country Brown of FWSY book posted by David of dmsnyder that I have to bake one right away after I’ve read about it.  I don’t have FWSY book and my local library doesn’t have it either so I just made up a formula based on David’s notes.  It worked out really well.

This loaf was intended for sandwiches so I chose 75% for dough hydration with 20% preferment flour.

 Levain @ 75% hydration

50g white starter @ 100% hydration

75g rye flour

50ml water

Mix all together and leave for 12 hours at room temperature of 17oC

Final Dough

175g rye levain

75g Australia’s Four Leaf whole wheat flour

325g Australia’s Laucke organic plain flour (11.5% protein)

300g water

5g salt

Mix two types of flours together with cold water, save 50g of water for a second hydration, and leave to autolyse for 12 hours at room temperature of 17oC. 

When the levain is domed, add to the dough along with salt and the rest of the water. Mix for a few minutes until the dough is smooth and make sure levain is evenly mixed through the dough. Bulk fermentation for 5 hours at 19oC room temperature with three double letter folds at 60, 120 and 180 minutes.  Shape and leave the dough for another two hours before pop it in the fridge to retard for 12 hours.

Preheat oven to 250oC. Score and bake the dough straight from the fridge in a Dutch oven (I baked this loaf in a Schlemmertopf). Immediately turn the oven down to 230oC and bake 25 minutes with the lid on and another 20 minutes with the lid off.

Although the method seemed to take a long time from start to finish, it suits my schedule very well.  I built the levain and mixed flour with water before bed time and left to autolyse overnight. They were all ready for dough mixing at noon. The shaped dough was ready to go to the fridge for retarding overnight at 5pm. The dough then baked off the first thing in the morning at 5.30 am (I set the timer for oven to be on at 4.45 am so it is preheated and ready for baking). I sliced the loaf for breakfast at 7.30 and packed sandwiches for lunch boxes too.  The whole loaf was consumed by dinner so I have no idea what it would taste like the next day. It was a very tasty loaf. The crust was thin and crunchy, the crumb was moist and soft. It tastes creamy and sweet as if I’ve added sugar to it with no hint of sourness at all. Very delicious bread indeed!

I dedicate this loaf to all the talented bakers here at TFL for their efforts to share the knowledge and experience in artisan bread making. Also I’d like thank Floyd for creating and hosting this wonderful website.

Happy baking everyone!

Annie