April 29, 2015 - 7:09pm
At what dough volume increase do you proceed?
Greetings
I've read that when fermenting, a 50% increase in volume is optimal for oven rise than waiting until the dough doubles or triples. I tried it today, and was surprised that the oven rise was huge, much better than when I let the dough doubles or triples in volume.
Did anyone notice this? do you proceed when your dough reaches 50%, doubles or triples?
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The make or break for oven spring is in the final proofing.
With bulk fermention you give the dough time to be inoculated by the starter and develop flavour. One can go straight into final proofing and take the dough to the optimum stage for a good oven spring or one can incorporate a bulk fermentation and take it beyond and then knock back and final proof. Whether your dough rises by 50%, doubles or triples in the bulk fermentation as long as you have enough time for final proofing then fine. All it'll do is effect the flavour and texture.
It depends what you want from your bread.
take whole grain breads to 85% proof and white ones to 95% proof. 50% proof, while giving great spring, can also cause too much spring where the dough to blow out where you don't want it to.
Happy baking
That's exactly what happened. The loaf kind of exploded, with a huge crack on top. But why do you say "where you don't want it to" ? I thought its a good thing, with all those big holes in the crumb. One can control the blow up by scoring a line in the middle of the loaf before baking, no?
Because while baking gas escapes from the bread and it will take the path of least resistance which will normally be the sides resulting in a poorly risen oddly shaped loaf. So one scores it to provide a means for the gas to escape and do a nice pattern at the same time. This way the oven spring will be better and it'll keep its shape.
Under proofing causes the loaf to expand uncontrollably. So while scoring might help somewhat you won't be getting the best out of the loaf.