November 8, 2010 - 8:48am
A slightly denser crumb at the bottom of the loaves
I seem to be having a constant problem with the bottom of my bread... Any bread. Wether it is multigrain, whole wheat or white bread, the bottom of the crumb is always denser than the rest, around half an inch. Baking the loaves a bit longer did help, but not entirely. Ideas?
here's the crumb (I squared the two areas where the crumb is denser):
I'm thinking the crumb is slightly undercooked, so it condenses a little bit when cooling. I'm baking for 50 minutes, at 350F, and it seems like a long time, so I'm not sure.
the loaves:
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It looks to me like the crumb is slightly denser on all of the exterior edges. I used to have a similar problem until I started concentrating more on gentle shaping skills. There could be other reasons too, but gentler shaping worked for me.
Watch some of the videos on shaping on this site and on You Tube and give it a try.
Michael
It does make sense... I just noticed that the denser part on the bottom is right above the seam too. I'm still getting the hang of carefully shaping the loaves.