Frustrated results

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Tuscan72 on 5 Jan 2025 at 06:03

Hi all and I hope you're having a great start of the 2025!

I've been baking sourdough bread since  the beginning of covid 2020 and I was expecting much better result after 5 years but it looks like my bread is not improving at all! I bake mainly batards and althoug they taste great, they come out without ears the majority of the time. Initially I thought it was because of my old gas oven and not using a pan to trap the steam so I replaced the oven and invested some money with the Challenger but to my surprise still no ears, which is a huge frustration considering all time and efforts I put in the bread preparation.

Occasionally I got the perfect loaf as shown in my avatar but 95% of the time when I open the lid of the challenger I get a wave of frustration that makes me wonder what I did wrong.

Here what I do, any comments are very welcome!

Friday morning 8am take sourdough starter out the fridge. Discard  all but 20g and add 70g bread flour 14.3g protein, 30g rye flour, 100g water. Leave it double and depending on kitchen temperature it is ready to be used between 1 to 6pm. Then I mix 130g ripen starter with 245g water, add 7g salt and 375g bread flour. Leave it to rest 1h then 4 serie of stretch and fold. I leave it rise in the evening or overnight untill it doubles. Then final shaping, transfer it to the bannetton and either goes  to the fridge or if I'm ready to bake, I preheat the oven at 250c with the challenger for 45m, add 2 ice cubes, lower the temperature to 235c and transfer the dough into the challenger. Bake for 20min ad 235c. Then open the lid, I get my weekly dose of frustration by not having the ears and bake it for another 30m at 200c.

Here're a couple of photos of today's earless bread

 

Those are very respectable-looking loaves, ears or not.

To get more pronounced ears, you need

  1. Lots of expansion potential left when the dough goes into the oven;  without that final push of the dough, you won't get much opening or ear.  You are looking for the dough to tear open at the score and that takes enough force.
  2. Fairly deep scoring, preferably at an angle rather than vertical. The more undercutting of the surface, the more potential for ears.

#1 comes from shortening the bulk and/or final proof stages.  Imagine that you went the other way and let the loaf rise until it stopped rising altogether. In the oven the loaf would barely be able to rise any more.  It could still end up large and have an open crumb but not much opening of the scores, let alone ears.  Your pictures look like that to me.

For #2, in your picture of the unbaked loaf, the main score seems very shallow to me. Don't be timid - slash firmly 1/4 or even 1/2 inch deep. If the loaf slumps and opens up too much, then either it wasn't shaped firmly enough or it was proofed too long. Stretching the dough more during shaping might help by creating more elasticity. But most likely, simply a shorter proof will do the job.

 

TomP

 

I agree with all of Tom's points. 

Most people, me included, tend to err on the underfermening/underproving side, but the picture shows possibly both over proving and overfermenting. The crumb is way too open and uniform. 

You are also using quite a lot of preferment, so BF will be pretty active. Maybe do the BF and proving during the day when you can be watching it and probing it for texture and feel and then, when you have a feel for the timings, make a schedule that fits with other commitments. 

Might be useful to keep a small sample of the final dough in a calibrated container of some sort so you can see more exactly the volume growth of the dough instead of relying on timings. 

As for scoring, what Tom writes is the way to go. 

I rarely let my dough bulk ferment to more than about 40% increase in bulk. You may be letting the dough rise too much during the BF stage. Mine is usually ready about 2-3 hours after the last stretch and fold. I BF at 78F.

If the shorter proof time doesn't help, try these two:

 - smaller dough size
 - lower hydration

Ears are like the holes in the crumb, nice to look at but functionally a pain.  Good luck :)

Hi Tuscan! 

The color of your loaves is lovely! Is your bread tasting very acidic? Does your starter taste quite acidic when it's at peak? I think you may find it beneficial to do 2-3 refreshes of your starter (at your current ratio) before your final mix. I suspect that your starter is a bit overwhelmed with the enzymes that break down your gluten, and a bit shy on leavening power. You will probably find that you could use less starter as well, perhaps using 75-100g would be sufficient. 

 

Good luck on the next bake!