Cracking of dough during proving

Profile picture for user namadeus
namadeus on 28 Jan 2012 at 02:31

Prepared dough for a Spelt, Wheatgerm &Oat Loaf last night at about 7pm. Now Saturday 28 Jan 10am.

Flour mix is 500gms white spelt / 100gms wheatgerm / 100gms pinhead oats / 300 gms dark rye

Put three loaves into our very cold conservatory overnight and this morning the dough looks like this :

Is this cracking more common in certain types of bread ? and does it effect the baking time as the loaf "opens" in the oven. Any comments welcome

 

I like the look when baked

Thanks for comments

I wouldn't let it proof any longer.  Maybe a little less.  That is definitely the surface look you want to see of your particular dough.  The flour dusting brings out the cracking.  Were the dough sitting in a banneton, the cracks would still be there, smaller but the basket would prevent sideways spreading.   If you used a towel lined or floured basket to hold the dough overnight, then you might improve the "lift" off the baking surface but that is only minor.  The loaf is beautiful!

I can't see the bottom crust.  Is it dark enough for you?

has reached it's limit of stretch.  The dough has a lot of low or non-gluten ingredients.  Spelt is not known for a lot of gluten but it is real stretchy stuff (at least I think so when combined with rye) wheat germ and oats are practically zip in the gluten department, and rye, rye depends a lot on how much is used and if handled with sourdough or acid to get maximum glue effect from its components.  

When you look carefully at the cracks, you can see that they seem only surface deep or just under the surface, which leads me to comment on the flour dusting of the dough.  The flour will hold in moisture by drying the surface limiting its ability to stretch, when the gas underneath is too much to contain, the outermost surface will tear first and then subsequent layers.