Hi folks.
I'm an accomplished cook with very little baking experience.
I'm working with the The Bread Baker's Apprentice book.
My first mission is to find a soft white sandwich bread for my family.
One problem that I'm having is when I score the surface to make split top, it deflates quite a bit.
I'm sure that this is a common beginner problem.
What steps can I take to fix this?
I've tried both bread flour and APF.
Ahh I see.
I proof until the dough doubles, punch down, shape and then proof again until I have a good dome on the loaf.
Sometimes my first rise goes a little long because I get busy with something else.
I'll pay more attention to that.
Ahh I see.
I proof until the dough doubles, punch down, shape and then proof again until I have a good dome on the loaf.
Sometimes my first rise goes a little long because I get busy with something else.
I'll pay more attention to that.
spot on it is over proofed. For white bread you wnat to get it into the oven at no more than 90% proofed - not 100%- when the center of the loaf has proofed to no more than 1" above the rim of the tin. Newbies tend to proof too much and then the dough deflates. Don't worry if it looks a littl small in the tin - the dough will spring in the heat and give you that nice large loaf.
The other problem that newbies have ios they donlt put enough dough in the tin and they have to let it rise too much even to get to 1" over the rim and it deflates then too.
To know how much dough to put in the tin, weigh the water in tin when it is full of water making sure to deduct out the the weight of the tin itself if your scale doesn't have a tare feature. To know how much dough you need just divide the weight of the water by 1.9. That will be the exact weight of the dough required so that when it rises 1/2" to 1:" over the rim in the center. So if the water weighs 2000 g then the dough should weigh 2000/1.9 = 1053 g . Problem solved.
Happy baking
Fantastic advice!! Thank you.
I will work on it. I've definitely been overproofing. I didn't know that I could rely on oven spring so much.
I did one unscored last night and still it shrunk down and was dense.
I'm being careful on adding too much flour and do get a good windowpane before shaping.
Well, that didn't turn out well.
I weighed out the dough according to the calculation above and the rise was ridiculous.
It's a 9x5 pan that holds 950 g of water. So I put 500 g of dough in the pan.
I definitely should have divided it. It tasted great though!
holds 1800 g of water when full so for a white bread 1800/1.9 = 947 g of dough. You miss weighed the water in your pan by a factor of 2 so the dough you put in was only half what it should have been. Put 950 g of dough in the pan and let it rise to 1/2"-1" over the rim in the center of the loaf and all your problems will go away.
Isn't the density of the dough different than that of water,especially after bulk fermenting? Beyond any initial difference of a flour/water mixture along with any air adding during mixing, I can't imagine all the gas is actually eliminated no matter how you punch it down. Yet, obviously the results are good, or you wouldn't use it.
Is it just that it is close enough or that it is biased to underproof? It works as an estimate and does the important thing of making sure the bread is not overproofed? I could easily buy that but you toss around such exact numbers whenever you quote the formula that it sounds like it is to get you to exactly 90%. Is there something obvious I'm mistaken about or not considering?
Oh boy... new scale blues.
I had it on a dry weight setting. Now my pan holds 1800 g of water.
I thought I was the victim of new guy hazing.
That would have been okay... I used to like to tell my new prep cooks that it was their job to mop the walk-in freezer floor.
I did a new batch tonight and they were my best yet!
Now I just need to work on the crust to get it the way we like.
Light and flaky like store bought sandwich bread. Mine is tough and chewy. The crumb is great though.
come out of the oven crust will be much softer and make sure to steam the oven even for a pan bread. You can brush or spritz it with water going in the oven too. Some people like to brush with butter when it comes out but most pan breads have bitter in them. We only haze the old guys and gals here....
I'll do that... Thank you.