The Fresh Loaf

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Troubleshooting Stencil Inconsistencies

francoispied's picture
francoispied

Troubleshooting Stencil Inconsistencies

Hi everyone, I have been trying to get this custom rose logo onto my SD loaves for many weeks now, and keep getting disappointing results with the Rice flour looking burnt or fully disappearing.  Here are my specs: 80% Bread flour (14% protein), 20% Whole Wheat, 70% total hydration, 25min autolyse, 23% starter, 2.7% salt, bulk fermentation with 3x stretch + fold every 30min. Shaping, proofing for 1-2h, cold storage overnight, stencil + score and bake out of the fridge.  My oven and baking specs:I use a Bakers Pride P44s, so bread bakes on a baking stone, with constant steam injection for 25min at 475f, then dry at 475f for about 10min.  Stenciling:I dust the loaves, apply rice flour on the stencil. I tried spraying and not spraying before baking. 

   The issue:The stencil tends to either stretch and start disappearing after the steaming phase, and is almost gone after the dry phase, or burnt.    Questions:How can I get a much sharper / clearer white stencil to stick to these babies? I am also really curious if someone knows how the baking techniques, amount of steam and temperature affects the result of their stencil.  Thank you all, Francois
pmccool's picture
pmccool

but I would expect the times for steaming and dry baking to be reversed.  In other words, 10 (maybe 15) minutes baking with steam and the remaining time baking without steam.

There's a King Arthur Baking blog about stenciling that you might want to read.  Step 4 in the blog seems to confirm your sequence.  Sorry not to have anything more useful to offer.

Paul

Mini Oven's picture
Mini Oven

or different mixtures of flours for the stencil?  

Say 20 or 25% rice flour to 80 or 75% reg wheat flour or the recipe flour?