Weekly Bake - Ears inspired by Kat
Got my weekly bake done today, and all went smoothly. The only real adjustment to my usual process was due to an early dinner that we had scheduled to celebrate our youngest daughter's birthday with her grandparents. Instead of my usual 1.5 hour final proof at RT (before retarding for a few hours), I only let it proof at RT for .5 hours, then into the fridge for about 6 hours. Everything came out well (no crumb shot yet, but I expect it will look the same as usual, perhaps a little tighter based on the dough feel, and how it looked out of the fridge.)
950g AP flour (Gold Medal)
80g WW flour (KA)
80g Semolina (BRM)
40g Dark Rye (BRM)
760g Water
250g active starter (100% hydration)
26g salt
The other minor change to my process was to try to replicate Kat's perfectly vertical ear from her blog post earlier today (HERE [1]). I dropped my scoring further down on the side of the loaf, whereas my usual scoring is just a bit to the side of the center line. On the first loaf, I think I was a bit hesitant with my slash, and this resulted in a bit of a wavy ear:
I approached the second one with a bit more confidence, slashing in one motion (I also move the slash location up just a bit....more toward center), and I got much closer to a "soldier" ear (standing at attention):
Other than that, I got good spring, nice color, and some good blistering, too.
I'll keep working on this scoring technique, as I find it somewhat visually appealing. Thanks for the inspiration, Kat! :)
Rich