The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

How to get an "ear" on sourdough bread

Grant Bakes's picture
Grant Bakes

How to get an "ear" on sourdough bread

Like many people in the sourdough home-baking world, I think it's fun to seek an open crumb and a prominent "ear" on my sourdough batards. Before, I used to get a true "ear" about half of the time on my batards, but since I learned a simple shaping technique and a scoring technique, I have been able to crank out good ears each time I bake. It feels great when something actually works consistently! Check out my video to see how I did it!

https://youtu.be/VQ0hGGHvxhA

 

Nothing that I have been doing is groundbreaking, just shaping to create tension and scoring at a shallow angle, all I know is that this combination of consistently shaping and scoring the same way is giving me good results. So I'm going to stick with it for now!

 

 

Surfcast23's picture
Surfcast23

I'm just learning how to score and this has been helpful. Thank you.

Grant Bakes's picture
Grant Bakes

Great! I'm so glad it was helpful. If you're active on YouTube, feel free to follow me at "Grant Bakes". I just started posting videos and I'm going to put out a few new tutorials soon. 

Mollybakes's picture
Mollybakes

This was super useful and helped me to understand the direction of tension I am creating when shaping. Something I actually hadn’t fully grasped before! Thanks! 

Grant Bakes's picture
Grant Bakes

Thanks! So glad you found it helpful. Understanding the direction of tension has definitely helped me.