December 15, 2010 - 4:21pm
Odd Shaped Boule
I baked a sour dough boule today that has an odd shape. It got some spring, but is pulled up on the edge, so it looks like a UFO. Any ideas?
It is a 100% sourdough bread, baked 1/2 on parchment and then the parchment was removed to help the bottom get a big crustier (does that really help?).
Share
Yanking out the paper makes it easier to use it again... :)
Looks great to me. Great bakeries in my area do odd shape, rustic looking loaves that taste superb. As I'm sure your loaves do. Don't worry what the geeky, perfectionists say.
maybe you got the UFO shape due to lack of steam? It looks like the crust on the top formed prematurely, before the interior of the loaf was finished expanding. Thus, your scores could not continue to expand to accomodate the full length of the oven spring. The loaf compensated by expanding downward instead of upward. Just a theory.
That shape is usually an indication of dryness. Either the dough formed a dry skin during proofing or you didn't have enough steam in the oven. In either event the crust didn't expand at the slits as much as it wanted to so it expanded the whole loaf into a football profile. Did you slit way early??? It kind of looks like it... and that can cause the problem, but the skin color looks like a dry oven to me... There is lots on this site about steaming technique.
Good luck! (and I know it tasted good!)
Jay
Jay and yy,
It was a steaming issue. I baked a few more, in several shifts and put more steam on the 2nd batch. It did not have the football profile and also developed "ears" more.
Thanks for you help!
Todd
Glad to hear you solved the problem!
As an aside it is easy to get that "football/flying saucer" profile. All you have to do is not slash your bread. Pane Pugliese and Pane di Genzano are both Italian breads that are not slashed. Instead one pokes them and does other things to give the loaves room to expand. However, they often expand beyond the corrections I make and then you get the weird shape. Knowing you had slashed he loaves, it was obvious to me that the loaf was forming a skin that was resisting expansion and forcing the whole loaf to expand and not at the slash.
Look forward to future posts!
Jay
I had similar shape when I overproofed shaped boule.
I use parchment paper if I'm not using my proofing baskets and I can't see any difference in the baking. We used paper under one of two pizzas in our wood oven and it also made no difference to the base or dough.