Hi - The sourdough tastes nice and gets good overspring, it just touches the inside of the lid, but what could be causing the air pocket at the top of the loaf?
Recipe: 123 Sourdough
150 g- levain
300 g- water
450g- AP flour (for those in Canada, it's the Loblaw, no-name brand)
12g of salt
Steps:
Levain build
Thursday
- Morning: Take out 4g of starter from fridge, and bring this up to room temp (about 4 hours). Levain comes from No-muss, no fuss
- Afternoon: Add 8g of WW flour and 8g of water to starter (leave overnight)
Friday
- Morning: Add 20g of WW flour and 20g of water to starter (comes out to 60g of starter at this point)
- Night: Add 45g of WW flour and water to starter (comes out to 150g of starter at this point)
- Night: Mix 300g water & 450g of AP flour (autolyze overnight at room temp, mixed but not work on for gluten dev.)
Saturday
- Morning: Add levain & salt to 300g water & 450g of AP flour mixture and mix with dough hook mixer for 45 minutes. 45 minutes may seem excessive, but I found that this amount of mixing is required for this type of flour. The levain doubles and hasn't fallen when I start.
- Afternoon: I take a small piece of dough and add it to an wide mouth pill bottle and mark it with lines to denote 0% and 100% rise, so I know when the BF is done. at 5 hours of BF it has doubled at room temp, bulk ferment is done, shaped and put into fridge overnight for 16 hours (fridge temp is 39 F).
Sunday
- Afternoon:
warm dutch over at 500F for 25 minutes, just the pot, not the lid.
bake straight from fridge for 25 minutes at 500F, spritz water liberally on loaf and on inside of lid
After 25 minutes, take off lid and tent with tinfoil for 15 minutes at 350F
After 15 mins, turn off over and leave in oven (with tinfoil) for another 15 minutes
Just a tiny shaping issue...popping any large gas bubbles while shaping the loaf. I want a bite into the crust, it looks so crispy. :)
When I first tried to make 100% sourdough bread I would get the infamous flying top crust (that is what you have), and it was explained to me that I was over-fermenting the dough. A number of folks here use a 100ml specimen container (which is referred to as an aliquot jar because it carries an aliquot/portion of the dough) for the same purpose you use your pill container. I put 30g of dough into the aliquot jar and let it bulk ferment to 25% volume increase or ~8ml before I divide and shape. Then final proofing can begin - usually either a room temperature proof or a hybrid proof with some portion at room temperature followed by some period of retarded proof. Hamelman suggests that 42°F and 16 hrs is a good combination after an hour or so at room temperature, but you really have to determine what works in your kitchen. I typically proof for 3 to 6 hrs at room temp depending on dough temperature, room temperature and yeast activity level.
Somebody posted recently (and I can't find it at the moment) about what bulk fermentation needs to do and concluded that during bulk the yeast is producing enough CO2 to saturate the dough, and until that happens there will be no volume increase (and after that the volume increase is exponential - limited by CO2 leakage). This sounds reasonable but I have not adopted it as gospel yet since I have some verification work to do.
Cut down on bulk ferment (from your calculation of 25% rise), approx 1.25 hours in my environment
You mentioned 3 to 6 hours for proofing, does that include the time for the BF?
For the proofing (after the BF and shaping stage), what am I looking for to know when to put it in the fridge? or know when it's ready if I'm not cold retarding?
Happened with me too, not scoring can cause it.