June 22, 2021 - 4:16am
Good crumb inside and dense at the end
Good morning,
recently, I've been getting a pretty weird bakes, meaning that the bread is very nice inside of the bread and gummy and dense at the ends.
That's cut straight in the middle:
And that's at the ends:
What can be the cause?
My dough it's about 67% hydration, bread flour and rye/spelt starter. Bulked for 2,5h, preshaped, rest for 10min, shaped, risen for 30min and then 18h final cold proof. I've cut bulk that short because it was super hot that day, ambient temperature about 26,5 degrees Celsius and dough temperature roughly at 29 degrees Celsius. I've baked in 235 degrees Celsius with a tray filled with water underneath.
Thanks in advance for the answers, and also, since that is my first post - hello everyone! :)
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are from the same loaf? The crumbs are very different.
Yes, they are the same loaf, it is weird, right? These dense parts are cut just at the very ends of the bread.
Was that loaf a batard? The end cut shows underfermentation while the center cut is pretty nicely fermented. The only way I can think of to explain that is that the dough ended bulk underfermented. The smaller end pieces with lower mass cooled more quickly to fridge temperature while the center took longer to cool and was able to ferment a bit more and was thus not underfermented.
Benny
Yes, it was a batard. What you're saying makes a lot of sense! I didn't think about it that way. Thanks :)
I concur with Benny that the end piece looks a bit underfermented. I picked up on the "inner area is fermented, but outer area is less fermented" on someone else's recent loaf too.
But it also looks more underbaked. There is no coloration of the bottom crust on the end-piece. Upper crust is brown, bottom crust is white. But the center-piece has a brown bottom crust. Hence, the stone was cooler at the ends than in the middle.
What could cause the outer ends to be cooler and less baked than the inner parts? That is counter-intuitive.
The clue is: "... with a tray filled with water underneath."
_Filling_ a tray (depends on size of tray) with water would put waaaay too much steam in the oven. Steam starts out at 100 degrees C, a lot cooler than the 235 C oven.
Hence.... steam cools the oven.
Steam also rises, because H2O is lighter than the O2 and N2 in air.
Steam can't go through the center of your baking stone, it has to go up and _around_ your baking stone.....cooling the periphery.
Hence.... it's the _outer_ (peripheral) area of the baking stone that cools the most and the fastest.
So the _center_ of the stone was likely hot enough, with enough thermal mass, but the periphery was cooler due to excess steam. Just my hypothesis.
I assume you used a stone. If you baked on a metal tray or baking steel, the effect would be worse.
Suggestion: Pre-heat your steam tray at the same time as your stone. But limit the amount of water to 1/2 to 1 cup (120 to 240 ml) of _boiling water_. Using cool or room temp water would rob even more heat from the stone and oven.
Use 240 ml for a full-size home oven (30" outside width, about 24" inside width), but 120 ml for a smaller built-in wall-oven.
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Too much water also takes too long to boil off, so it would continue to cool the oven for a longer period.
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So please tell us, what exactly is your baking, oven, and steaming arrangement? Size of oven? Length, width, thickness of stone? Length, width, depth of steaming pan? How much water? Did you boil the water right before you added it? At what point in time did you add water? At start of pre-heat or right after loading the dough onto the stone?
Those answers will confirm or rule-out my hypothesis of too much steam cooling the stone and oven.
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(Hat tip to Mini Oven who taught me to look at the bottom crust for clues.)
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A picture of the top crust can also give clues if there was excess steam in the oven.
Hi!
Yes, as I was reading your post, I realized that is all very likely to be true. I bake on a steel tray and put a tray filled with hot, almost boiling water just before I put a bread in the oven. My steaming pan is about 20x30cm so it's pretty big for the oven I use (I don't know the measurements, I'm guessing that it's something about 50x50x50cm or something very close to that). I also put the baking tray not in the middle of the oven, but a bit lower, so it's very little free space between a baking tray and a steaming tray - I guess that can be the problem too.
I bought a stone yesterday, but did not have a chance to use it yet. I'll test it according to all of the tips that you gave, hope it would help :)
Thank you so much for that answer, I feel like it would be a solution to my problem :)
When I’m baking baguettes which require steaming devices, I’ll bake the baguettes below both the cast iron skillet and Sylvia towel pan both on a rack above. It has always worked for me and is a set up that you could try. That being said, I do know many bakers who have their steam set ups below their bread and are able to bake successfully.
Benny
Joanna: Have you baked another loaf yet? How did it go?
Yes agree with Benny and also the shaping may not have been ideal after dumping the bulk fermented dough on the bench. How large is your oven, and how uniform is the temperature distribution throughout?