How to fix dough that tears before baking?
Hello everyone! It's been awhile since I've posted but I had a question I wanted to ask. I've been baking for some time now and have had some good success. Normally, when I bake a boule I use a banneton with brown rice flour to prevent sticking, which has worked very well for me. This week I ran out of brown rice flour so I used all purpose flour instead. Unfortunately, with my most recent bake a part of the dough stuck to the banneton and left a large tear in the dough. At that point, I had reached the point of baking and I wasn't sure how to fix it. I thought perhaps I could try to reshape it and put it in the oven but I wasn't sure if that would just make things worse so I ended up putting it in the oven. I was curious to know if anyone has any solutions to fix dough when this occurs or if I just have to accept that it happened? :D
For reference I was using the Overnight Country Brown from FWSY, which I believe is close to 80% hydration.
Hello Rickenheimer,
There are three ways to fix a tear that I use
One is to reshape the loaf without degassing it too much and let it rest for a few min, then bake as usual.
Two is to use that tear as a decorative cut on the surface and design a few more decorative cuts around it, in a pinch, the tear can also be patched, a tiny piece of dough taken out from the loaf (or freshly mixed), rolled out thinly, moistened and placed on top as a decoration - a leaf, a flower, etc.
Three is to close it, bring the edges together and pinch them. If it leaves a visible scar, sprinkling the surface with flour, bran, rolled oats, seeds, etc. prior to baking it will help as well.
I usually reshape the loaf (fix number one), but then I never refrigerate my loaves before baking them, so the dough relaxes and proofs quickly.
P.S. instead of rice flour use pure starch, if you have some. It works even better than rice flour. Of course, a tablespoon of rice grains can be milled into rice flour in a coffee grinder or a blender as well.
Hi Mariana. Thank you so much for these great solutions! In this case it was quite a large tear so I think trying to pinch it back together would've been a good thing to try. This might be a silly question but if I use your second solution, should I also try to reshape the dough after cutting off a piece of the dough or is it usually enough to tuck that portion of the dough in?
Also, great suggestion to use starch or use rice to mill rice flour. I wish I had thought of that! :D
...I made sure to have this 7 inch icing spatula at the ready to help "tease" the sticky dough out of the banneton without tearing. I would hold the banneton inverted and gently loosen the sticking parts with the spatula and the dough would drop free with minimal-to-zero damage.
Never run out of rice flour! :)