Could someone offer me advice on why my final,baked sourdough loaf is looking more like a frisbee than a nice loaf?
im always getting a very good rise on both my first and second proofing, but the loaf deflates as soon as I score it and place it in the oven.
Advice please?
Olivia9801
1 overprooft
2 to wet dough
3 not enough strenght developed white final shaping.
Hello Olivia,
I agree complelety with what dbazuin said about the dough and i jsut wanted to develop it a bit more and give some examples of how each factor may affect your douh.
1 - High hydration :
This video shows how the increase in hydration can affect your dough. Wetteer dough often means that it keeps its shape less, leading to flatter breads
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvAxtECqRAs
2- overproofing
Overproofing simply means that the starter "eats" more than it should and starts breaking the gluten bonds making a looser loaf of bread.
3- Not sufficient tension during shaping.
Shaping plays a major role in breadmaking. I was unaware of how imporatn it was untill i managed to shape a loaf correctly. The aim of shaping is to create surface tension on the loaf and allow it to keep a shape while proofing. I personally could tell when i did a good or bad job at shaping when it came out of the proofing basket. If the loaf starts spreading on the table right away it may mean that it was poorly shaped.
4- I would also consider the cooking method. By inserting steam into your oven, either through the use of a dutch oven or simply a tray containing water at the bottom of your preheated oven plays a major role in the oven spring of bread. Steam helps keep the outside surface of the bread moist for the fist few mintures of cooking. This allows the dough to rise more. If the bread was introduced into a hot oven, the exterior would dry out and prevent it from expanding as much.
Hope that helps :)
Thank you for the two responses. After reading your advice, I’m of the opinion it was due to a combination of over proofing and over hydration. My last dough did concern me as being to soft from the outset. I will try and address these on my next loaf!
I always use water in my bake.
You may be an expert shaper, Olivia, but for others reading: working on my shaping dramatically improved oven spring for me and my sourdoughs. After a couple months of practice I would say that I am now up to the level of a mediocre shaper. I can get pretty good spring, but I think I am shaping a bit unevenly as I will sometimes get one side of the loaf rising more than the other. I feel like shaping loaves is one of those skills that needs just a ton of practice.
Another thing that seemed to help a lot was tightening in the banneton. I do the best I can to get it in shape following the many video demos I've watched online. Then, in the basket, I tighten it further by taking the exposed sides and ends and gently pulling and pinching them into the center. This seems to help a long with trapping gas during the final proof and then helping rise in the oven.
I agree with Somaek on the shaping. Shaping high hydration doughs is hard (for me at least). I found it helpful to take down the hydration in my doughs, and work on my shaping with a dough that was easier to handle. After I built up some muscle memory in shaping, I'm starting to slowly increase hydration. But I also find that I prefer an old school, even crumbed loaf most of the time. So it's worth a try to dial the water back if you feel like your dough is too loose after all your proofing steps.