October 14, 2012 - 9:44am
VERY basic proofing question
I have been baking bread for a long time. Sometimes with great success and sometimes not. The one thing that has always troubled me is in the proofing. How do I know exactly what I am looking for to make sure my dough has proofed enough and not over proofed. I have always gone with the double in size method but sometimes I have success and some times not do much.
thanks for the help, this is a great site and I can't wait to try some of what I have learned here already.
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Usually the recipe tells you how much or how and how long and at what temperature and humidity to proof the dough before baking. In that aspect every bread is unique, some only double in volume, some are not supposed to rise at all, or barely so, others rise 4x and even 6x in volume. It all depends on the recipe (dough composition) and the typical crumb and external characteristics of the bread you want to achieve - smooth top, decorative cracks on the surface, barely open vs wildly open cuts with ears, deep cuts that you want to stay deep in the finished loaf or shallow cuts which you want to open up, etc. .
The only answer is to work on one specific bread at a time and practice proofing it just right. It won't work for the next recipe, but you will master one bread at a time, one recipe at a time.
mariana
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/26938/how-tell-when-final-proof-done-ready-oven
I need to understand the concept of what I am doing so I know how to judge what works. This is what I figured out(above) and it seems helpful to know. I still have to work at it.
Thank you all for your replies. Clazar that is exactly the type of info I was looking for. Great explanation. Off to the kitchen!!