Feathery not gummy

pjkobulnicky on 18 Oct 2007 at 10:38

One of my holy grail goals is to produce a loaf of free-form white bread that has a crispy, not chewy, crust and a light, feathery texture to the crumb. I can get a crispy crust with a high-hydration dough and high baking temps. However, with this I usually get a crumb that has nice structure with lots of holes but the texture of the crumb is gummy and has a sort of waxy sheen to it ... kinda what you expect in a ciabatta for example. Anyone want to weigh in on how one makes the crumb light light and feathery?

One thought I had is that one might not want a lot of gluten formation so one might want to use a softer flour.

Paul

I usually approach this as a yeasted dough and i usually do a preferment with another yeast booster in the final dough. What makes you recommend a poolish, Mini O,  versus some other preferment technique?

Paul

 

Paul Kobulnicky

Baking in Ohio

Fluffy normally means dairy product, potato flakes, butter or shortening in the dough.  What if you took a yeasted feathery dough, and wrapped it in a blanket of your perfect crust dough and then baked it?

Mini O

Whenever I want that consistency I increase the time for the hand mixing of Ciabatta dough and increase the hydration of the dough. The increased water content will make the end product soft and fluffy, but the increased time will prevent large holes from forming during fermentation and/or baking. So high hydration doughs with increased hand mixing should give you what you want.
The above answers should do it.  One other thing, be sure the bread is fully baked.  I would think an internal temp of 200F to 210F.