Big Holes

Hi, lisah.

To make a bread with an open crumb, you need to make a "high-hydration" dough. The weight of the water needs to be between 70% and 85% of the weight of the flour. Now, some breads have even higher hydration, but we won't go there yet, assuming you have not worked with "wet" doughs before. But, in general, the higher the hydration, the more open the crumb.

If you use whole grains or flours with higher protein, they absorb more water resulting in a drier dough, so the 70-80% hydration would need to be increased to get the same openness.

Second, you need to have a complete bulk fermentation. Cutting it short, will not give the yeast enough time to make the CO2 necessary to make the holes you want.

Third, you need to handle the dough gently so you don't squash the bubbles too much. This is important when you divide the dough and form the loaves.

Forth, all the maneuvers that improve oven spring will also result in bigger holes. This is a big topic in its own right which has been discussed a lot.

If you have never made a bread with a really nice open crumb, I would suggest starting with one that is not too demanding and makes outstanding bread. I have in mind "Nury's Light Rye." The formula is in Daniel Leader's book, "Local Breads," but can also be found in this TFL entry:

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/5500/pierre-nury’s-rustic-light-rye-leader

Now, this is a sourdough bread. So, if you have not made sourdough breads before, that will require some time, effort and learning up front. But most, if not all, of the breads you will see on TFL that have the kind of crumb you want are sourdoughs. You can achieve this with other methods using pre-fermented doughs such as pâte fermentés or bigas, but, in my opinion, sourdough is worth the effort.

If you have some bread cookbooks, we might be able to suggest other specific recipes you already have. Look for formulas for ciabatta, rustic bread, or pugliese. These are popular breads that have an open crumb.

I hope this helps.

David

Hi Lisa,

First off, I second all the suggestions by dmsnyder.

I would only add, from my own experience, that retarding the proof of sourdough, i.e. letting it rise, after shaping, in the refrigerator helps in getting a nice open crumb. I find this to be the case even when the hydration is under 70%, say at 67%. The first time one does it, it seems kooky and even scary. Will the loaves rise? But they do, and they hold their shape after a night's worth of chillin'.

Also, good steaming can make a big difference. There are a lot of posts on TFL about steaming, and I suggest you dig in here and read about the subject. I am finding that keeping the tops of the loaves moist, with steam if possible (I have been using one of those "steam cleaners"), has a lot to do with good oven spring and thus with allowing the CO2 to expand in the oven and render nice big holes.

Good luck!

Soundman (David)

I think. I've been on a holy run lately and I've broken all the no nos. I've used instant yeast, dry yeast, and sourdough. I've been brutal to my dough to the point of using a rolling pin. I've done it with 65% hydration all the way to 87%. And Still come out with bubbles, lots of them. The last sandwiches were embarrassing, I had to stuff the holes with cheese and little tuffs of bread and still had mayonaise spots to wash out of shirts.

I think the secret is in the mixing. I'm a lazy mixer, and I've been mixing by hand. The less I mix the more holes I have. I suggest if you want to develop holes, mix less. Easy enough.

Just mix everything together to a shaggy dough and let it sit 30 to 60 minutes covered. Come back and knead just enough to even out lumps and shape into a ball, about 1 minute. Smear lightly with your favorite healthy oil and let it rise covered refrigerated or not (I would give a sourdough about 4 hours counter time before chilling.) Whatever happens next doesn't seem to matter, I've punched it, dropped it and even rolled it out flat and rolled it up again. I've even doubled a recipe, kneaded it lightly again and proofed it again.

Then I fold the dough a few times with rests in between to allow dough to relax and gasses to form. There are always lots of bubbles. Eventually shape into a loaf and let it rise before baking. Don't forget to slash and bake with added steam. My last loaf was the 1-2-3 method and steamed under a stainless bowl the first 15 minutes at 250°c.  Gives a fantastic crust!

Mini O

How nice to get what you want for less effort!  I'll have to give it a try - thanks.

David, Another poster here (MaryfromHammondsport?)  has used a very large roasting pan to cover two loaves.  The oval shape must be the secret, one boule at each end.

Marni

Nice Post Mini-O,

I am wondering whether you (or anyone) has any theories as to why the ragged, neglected to hydrate dough method produces larger bubbles.  I haven't tried the method yet but feel that your simply stated method may well have wide ranging implications.  David's thought on hydration is also something that's worth considering (i.e. wetter dough => bigger bubbles). 

I have a build coming up and am thinking about having a go with the raggedy, neglected to hydrate, punched out and unduly mangled dough method...,

Wild-Yeast 

Mini 0's discovered secret of wholey crumbs is well-discussed and illustrated in Suas' "Advanced Bread and Pastry" in the chapter on mixing.

Suas is discussing machine mixing only, but the principle holds: Intensive mixing (high speed for a long time)results in highly organized gluten. This means the gluten strands are lined up. The result is a very even crumb texture with small holes, evenly distributed.

Mixing for a shorter time at slower speed results in more chaotic gluten and a crumb with holes of many different sizes unevenly distributed.

The trick is to develop sufficient gluten strength to form the walls that hold the CO2 and allow formation of a good loaf structure for good oven spring and a pleasing shape.

I think the following combination of methods results in good gluten formation without too well-organized gluten:
1. Autolyse
2. A long primary fermentation with several stretch and fold episodes.

I think this is consistant with what Mini was saying. I just don't want anyone to forget that good gluten development is really important, but it is not the same as gluten organization. Big holes require good gluten development _and_ "poor" gluten organization.

At least, that's my understanding.

David

This is consistent with my current experimentations.  I fell in love with the slap and fold technique and have been doing 15 minutes of same as a general rule with my baguettes.  The resultant loaves do have some big holes, but the whole general structure of the bread is more... uniform, close, civilized... than when I was just doing some stretch and folds rather than the prolonged kneading technique.  I'm now drifting back to the stretch and fold technique and away from the slap and fold.  I also find it interesting that the "slap the heck out of it after every fold" technique for shaping still results in good sized holes as compared to the "be gentle and don't disturb the bubbles" technique of shaping.  So much to play with!  I love bread baking!

PS  I was gone two weeks and totally lost my touch while I was away, along with my starter going south on me.  I'm getting a starter going again (many jars and experiments later :-) and I'm getting my stroke down again for the bread.  It was awful to not have any naturally fermented loaves there for awhile.

:-Paul

Interesting discussion but isn't quite what was observed from the experiment completed last night.

A regular build was accomplished by mixing the water, starter, salt and flour for 1 minute.  The rough dough was then allowed to hydrolize for 30 minutes.  It was then machine kneaded with a dough hook for 8 minutes and finished by hand kneading for 2 minutes more.  The dough was then retarded under refrigeration for 24 hours.

The dough was then pulled from refrigeration and allowed to come to room temperature.  Loaves were formed, placed on parchment and placed in a proofing box at 80 dF for 6 hours.

The dough was then slashed and placed on the baking stone in a 450 dF convection oven.  Because of the loafs size an aluminum tent was jury rigged to cover the loaf for the first 17 minutes in the oven after which it was removed as was the parchment.  The bread finished baking for 23 minutes.  It was then placed on a cooling rack to cool overnight.

The crumb demonstrated a more varied bubble size (no really big ones though) but the most notable difference was in the texture.  The crumb was much more chewy with the taste hinting of cream both in taste and texture.  I'd say this is, overall, a great improvement and will now be worked into my build process.

One interesting point is that the dough became very wet during the proofing.  A slightly dryer dough will  be tried next time.  I suspect that the hydration period is somehow responsible for this but I am not totally sure of the exact mechanism.

Wild-Yeast

David,

Thanks for the clear explanation and research from Suas. What you say makes sense and also confirms what I, and I suspect others, have been seeing in the bread we are baking.

I have gotten gradually weaned from my KA mixer and rely much more on my kneading abilities. I stop when the gluten feels substantial enough to form a good loaf and resists my efforts (way, way short of 600 folds!). The hole structure I am getting is consistently, as you put it, chaotic. But the holes are large in general, especially considering the amount of whole grain flour I'm using, and as compared to what I was getting when I relied more on machine-mixing.

As an example, some pictures follow from my weekend's efforts. The recipe is a variation on Flo Makanai's 1.2.3 Sourdough Bread formula. This variation is simply the use of 25% organic white whole wheat flour and 5% stone-ground organic whole rye. As I noted above, I think the largish-boule shape affects the size of the holes (smaller) to a degree. In other words, baguettes would show somewhat larger holes. Nonetheless, the bread is wholly holey.

The machine mixing took 1 minute pre-autolyse, and 2 minutes with the dough hook after adding the levain and salt. I kneaded for another 5 minutes, at which point the dough was resisting my efforts so I put it in a bowl to ferment. I folded it 3 times at intervals of 90 minutes during the 6 hour bulk fermentation. Then 1 hour of proofing and into the fridge for 20 hours. It got 1.25 hours at room temp before loading into the oven, with steam, at 475 dF. I turned the oven down to 460 at the 10-minute mark and then down to a final temp of 440 5 minutes later, at which point I turned the loaves and swapped their places in the oven. Final interior temp was 207 dF.

Maybe more important is that the flavor is delicious and bold, which may owe to a long (6-hour) bulk fermentation, or the overnight retarded proofing, the use of the whole grain flour, or, finally, the mixing process... or of course all of the above.

30% whole grain 1.2.3 bread

Two crumb pix:

30% whole 1.2.3 Crumb A

That's from toward the end of the loaf, but is characteristic of the hole-chaos.

Another from the middle:

30% whole 1.2.3 Crumb B

This second picture (I was a bit unsteady) doesn't show large holes, but the crumb is anything but tight. Close examination reveals lots of sizable holes that don't go all the way through the slice.

The hydration of the bread is 67%, which helps promote an airy crumb, in spite of the 30% whole grain. One last point: this recipe, with simple variations, and this mixing/kneading technique, is yielding very consistent results.

Soundman (David)

David,

Nice looking boule.  The crumb fermtation bubbles are slightly larger than those I obtained but  are more or less consistent.  Is the crumb chewy?  

Allowing the flour to hydrate before kneading seems to affect the protein development and the chewiness of the eventual bread.  Reducing the kneading time seems to affect the randomness of the bubble size....,

Wild-Yeast

I proof for 6 hours at 80 dF.  The dough is still fairly cold from refrigeration.  A reduced period of ~4 hours should suffice for room temperature dough. I notice that the bulk doubling times in most of bread books tend to be fairly short of what that which I experience.  This also may be a result of the levaning capability of my starter.  The bread it produces is too good to abandon in hopes for a more energetic one.  Note that the method I use goes from kneading to refrigeration without a fermentation period. I am thinking about letting it ferment for an hour or two before punching down and placing under refrigeration.  This should shorten the proofing period to around 4 hours or so..,

Wild-Yeast