Baking and baking and not improving!
I think I bake sourdough bread for 2 years now and I have never had a perfect oven spring or big ear. Basically, my bread doesn't grow up, sideways only. Now, I am trying to analyze what goes wrong.
My recipe: 80g starter, 300g water, 360g bread flour, 40g whole wheat flour.
1. I am mixing levain in the evening, so in the morning it's ready to use. I make 1:7:7 mix, keep it in the proofing box at 26C, +/- 1C.
2. In the morning I make autolyze for 30 min in a warm temperature, only flour and water.
3. After that, I mix everything and the dough goes to the proofing box.
4. I fold 3 times every 30 min. The dough looks nice and elastic. And hopeful, lol
5. When the dough reaches a certain volume increase, I preshape it. Leave for 10 min, shape, put in banneton and in the fridge 3-4C till next morning. I bake bread straight from the fridge.
6. The bread from the photo was baked in a ceramic container with a glass lid. 15 min at 450F with a lid on, then 12 min at 450F(forgot to lower it to 425F) without a lid.
Here I made an experiment - 3 small loafs made with different bulk increases. Here are my photos
Also, these are very small loaves (200g flour), and that's why they are more round, if it would be a bigger loaf it would be flatter. But anyway nothing learned from this experiment, lol.
But please do not be misled with my bulk experiment, maybe the problem is in my starter?
Thank you for reading this,
Elena
I am no expert, but that bread picture at the bottom looks beautiful. Nice open Crumb. As far as an ear goes, perhaps score a little deeper at a 45ﾟ angle.
This video has some good tips, along with this older TFL post. There are a lot of great posts on this site on the topic. As recommended, you can score 45 degrees relative to normal vector at the location of your score (you want to slice a flap of dough). For classic batards at 1:00 (or thereabouts), this may require holding the lame close to horizontal. Lowering hydration, lowering the proof, and working with cold dough are all things that can make it easier.
I think your hydration is a little to high (77%), that's all... The bread looks fine anyway, the crumb is gorgeous. Just use a little less water, I'd try 70% hydration (so 270 g water instead of 300 g). I don't know your flours, but 77% is quite high unless you know what you are doing or your flours are very thirsty.
Also I guess you just forgot to mention the salt in the recipe?
Hello,
Thank you for your kind words! The video about scoring was very good. I actually subscribed to his channel but missed that video. I will be reading the post too.
It was hard to cut the dough, it was too soft although it was in the fridge for long and I cut it totally wrong - vertically.
I will try now with a bigger loaf and see. I am also trying to see the difference between baking in a closed container and baking on a steel plate (0.5" thick) with steam from lava rocks
Ilia, спасибо, I will try tomorrow a bigger bread with lower hydration and with very shallow scoring. This recipe was from Tartine book, but I scored it wrongly and baked at a lower temperature, I only preheated to 450F and after opening it was about 400F.
If the appearance of ears depends on hydration, is there a level of hydration beyond which they cannot appear? Or it depends on skills?
thank you again
I know you said whole wheat but the Tartine folks use a Yecora Rojo flour for their basic country loaf and that flour is high in protein (about 15%). Many bread doughs are 12-13%. The difference might allow them to work better with a higher hydration so, if your flour is a more typical protein level dropping the hydration might help.
Less water for higher instead of wider. Enjoy!
Increase temp and experiment between 500deg F and 550deg F. The loaf is spreading before the crust sets.
It's a balancing act between getting heat into the dough for oven spring, prior to the crust setting. 450deg F is on the low side, the color of your loaves is pale to my eye.
Thank you, will do it and will come back with photos!