I am very new to sourdough bread baking and have found this forum to be an invaluble source of information. I have had great difficulty trying to work with the wetter doughs and in particular, creating tension with them... but thats another story...
I’ve been turning out ugly bread with nice flavour (everything is nice toasted), then came across a Pain Au Levain recipe by Peter Reinhart that suits my lack of ability to work the higher hydration doughs (I will perservere with and hopefully get the hang of them eventually.)
My main issue currently, is that my loaves are busting out all over the place even though I score at different depths to try to sort it. My last three loaves look like the one in the photo with various depths of cracking.
Is it because the dough is too dry? I’d really appreciate some ideas about why they bloom like this. Thank you, Lynda (Medusa)
and there are enough of us that would trade loaves with you! Especially us crust lovers!
The "opening" is exactly what I would expect from a long score running down the length of the loaf. Well done!
now if you want a different "look" try a different score or not scoring at all.
Might prefer two or three parallel scores instead. Play around and have fun!
edit to update...
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/31887/scoring-bread-updated-tutorial
Thank you so much for your encouragement MIni Oven. The loaves I have seen here on the forum haven’t seemed as open as mine and I thought I was messing up! There isn’t room here for photos of my previous mishaps of the sourdough kind... there have been so many. It’s good to know that maybe I am getting better. What an amazing journey so far! I am enjoying it a lot. Thank you for taking the time to respond and for your suggestions. I’ll give them a go. Have a great day :)
Agreed absolutely. Looks like a great loaf to me.
Great oven spring and a really nice looking loaf.
The roughness of the opening (which isn't a problem) does make me wonder:
1. what you are doing for steam
2. how much rye is in your pain au levain...when I get to 20-30%, my loaves do something similar...but at 5-10% they don't
True blowouts can come from underproofing, insufficient steam, and/or really big air bubbles that weren't popped in pre-shape/shaping
Thank you for your comments bikeprof ?
To answer your thoughts -
1. I always bake in a bread cloche with a cold oven start. I have tried the baking pan of water and baking stone method, but that didn’t give results that pleassd me. I have also tried the heated dutch oven method but again, I wasn’t keen on the result, particularly that the bottoms of my bread were burnt.
2. The only rye I use is my 100% hydration, 100% rye mother starter. For a two loaf recipe, it uses 70g (2.4oz) of the mother to create the stiff starter.
I have taken your suggestions of possible reasons for the blowouts, revised my next batches and did see a better result. Please see photo of revised bread.
Underproofing may have been part of it as the bread had stayed in the fridge overnight as a ball and shaped 2 hours prior to baking. Maybe I didn’t let it sufficiantly warm up before shaping.
I also changed my mother starter to my white version, thus eliminating all rye.
Thank You for your comment jeremycherfas ??
I would give my right arm (well, maybe not) for bloom and oven spring like that!
How are taste and crumb?
Lovely loaf, enjoy it!
Carole
More steam might help, but It looks like the individual layers of the shaped loaf never bonded together. Rather than the loaf *as a whole* opening at the score, each layer from shaping is tearing in turn as it's exposed to the heat (think falling dominoes).
If the dough wasn't slightly tacky, I'd add a little more water to the mix, and use the bare minimum of bench flour while shaping--a little tackiness is OK while shaping (helps build tension), unless you're pushing out baguettes.
Thinking along vtsteve's line of dry dough (good eye) you might want to look up Peter Reinhart's wet hand kneading. He introduced it to me and it has been a great tool in dough handling. Basically using slightly wet hands or finger tips to touch and handle the dough without using flour. The trick is not to get too wet and re-wet finger tips only as needed keeping a bowl of water nearby. It does take a loaf or two to get the hang of it but well worth the effort. You don't want the dough to get slimed just enough to stay tacky. :)
Thank you for your help once again mini oven ?
earlier in this journey of the breadly kind, I did try the wetted hands method, but very obviously got it all wrong, as I did end up with total slime that I tried to resolve with about half a packet of flour which resulted in the stodgiest, stickiest, heaviest and flattest ‘sourdough’ loaf ever produced. ;) I will source the Peter Reinhart method and will post a bread photo of the results :) Now I understand a little about how to handle the dough in a more gentle and decisive way, maybe I will have more success this time. Here is a photo of the slimy loaf below... humble beginnings... thanks again so much for your advice and time - Lynda
Regarding wet hands, I thoroughly wet my hands (palms, fingers, etc.) when doing stretch-folds, with no flour. This works well.
My normal bake is a Brötchen (roll), and when forming the rolls I do not use water on the hands, and do use flour. It works for me.
Thank you for your comment vtsteve ?
I completely agree about the dry dough. That was certainly my initial thought and it’s true that I did flour my bench quite a lot as I do have issues with the sticky and wet doughs. Following your advice (and miniovens above :), I used no extra flour, very lightly oiled my hands and started using my bench scraper in a more useful way. I think the resulting bread did seem a lot better, with both rising, tension and resulting bloom (photo of loaf made using your suggestions below) Thank you for your help and have a great day ?