January 27, 2021 - 12:04pm
Loaves hard to cut?
It seems that my sourdough crust, while tasty, is extremely hard to cut through; especially the base of the loaf. Sawing through with a bread knife is a chore, it almost seems a straight bladed chefs knife works better.
anyone have any tips? I may back my cooking time down a bit as my last loaf was quite browned.
Share
half of the bake the crust will be thinner, I use a Dutch Oven but anything that will retain the steam will do the trick.
Depending on the hydration of your dough, you may find reducing the bake time doens’t fully bake your crumb. You might want to reduce the temperature for the second half (non steam) portion of the bake and extend the length of the bake.
What I have recently discovered to make the crust thinner yet still crispy is that I extend the lid on baking potion of the bake. Using a dutch oven, I preheat at the standing 500ºF with the dutch oven in the oven. When ready, I load the dough into the dutch oven putting the lid on. I drop the temperature to 450ºF and bake for 20 mins. Then keeping the lid on, I drop the temperature to 420ºF and continue to bake lid on for a further 10 mins. Next I remove the lid and bake another 10 mins at 420ºF with the bead still in the dutch over. Then I remove the dutch oven and place the loaf directly on the rack to finish the bake which usually takes about 10-15 mins more for my 900 g dough.
The extended lid bake has had the effect of making the crust thinner. Removing the bread from the dutch oven near the end has had the effect of making the bottom crust a bit easier to slice.
Benny
then slide the bread on to the baking stone and cover with the Dutch Oven. After 20 minutes I remove the Dutch Oven and bake a further 20 minutes. I preheat the oven to 500° and lower it to 425° when I put the bread in, the crust is nice and crisp and not much of a challenge to bite through. I use to bake without the help of the Dutch Oven years ago and I always got comments that the bread tasted good but the crust is too hard to chew.
Thanks for the replies. My current process is preheat Dutch oven to 500F, place bread in, cover, and bake at 500F for 20 min, remove cover, and bake at 450F for 25 min. I’ll have to experiment with longer lid-on times perhaps.
Consider dropping the temp to 450ºF after loading your dough into the dutch oven as well, 500ºF is a very high temperature to bake most bread in.