Hi all,
I've recently been playing with a new recipe and have been having mixed results with oven spring. Recipe as follows:
- 400g strong white flour
- 50g wholemeal
- 300g water at 30C
- 150g starter that's been fed twice the day before (8-12h since last feed)
- 10g salt
Recipe is to mix all apart from salt and autolyse for 45mins, then to add salt and mix in a stand mixer until it passes windowpane. Bulk ferment for 3-4h, pre-shape and rest for 30min, then repeat pre-shape for strength. Shape and then proof for 1-2h.
All this went well (when I turned the bread out of bannetons, it didn't seem to flop everywhere so I was pretty happy!), but the oven spring wasn't great and the crust has severely softened on cooling. I also noticed that the crumb was a lot more open and fluffy towards the outside of the loaf, whereas it was quite dense towards the inside.
The recipe suggests the follows:
- Preheat Dutch oven for 45mins at 250C (fan)
- Put bread in and immediately knock temperature down to 220C (no fan if possible)
- Bake with steam for 20mins and without for 15-20
Are there any thoughts on these instructions and how they might affect the quality of the baking? I've attached a few photos of each loaf to show what I mean :)
I'm still in the learning phase as well, but the total start to finish time on your dough seems very quick--approximately 7 hours if I added correctly. Longer ferment/proof times typically improve gluten development and flavor. There is also a high percentage of starter in your recipe. Instead of the manual kneading, you could do a series of stretch and folds over 3-4 hours (after your autolyse) and then a much longer final proof after shaping. Many of the recipes on this site recommend an overnight proof in the fridge (8-10 hours or more), then directly into a DO and into a hot oven. I imagine the flavors would also improve this way and you might be happier with the crumb structure. I think some extended time in the fridge (a minimum of 4 hours) helps improve oven spring too. But again, those recipes typically don't use such a high amount of starter...you don't want all that starter to run out of food too quickly. I've seen and used recipes like this for 'same day' sourdough (Patrick Ryan comes to mind), and you can get some good results, but I think you might be happier, given your questions above, with a longer process, both in flavor, crumb/oven spring and crust. I think you can eke out a higher percentage of water in some of those recipes, which might give you the more open crumb you are looking for. A generic 'everyday' sourdough can typically be about 500 g total flour (smaller percentage of whole wheat for flavor)/360-370 g water/50-70 g happy starter/10 g salt.
As an aside, I always have to reheat my sourdough loaves before serving to crisp up the crust as the outside of the loaves naturally softens over time. It looks like you have some very 'organized' gluten structure from the manual kneading mixed in with some larger air pockets from proofing. It could be that you did not shape evenly either. That being said, this looks like a very nice loaf of bread...I certainly would not be too disappointed with that bake.
How was the flavor and texture? Dry or custardy? Are you wanting to stick with a one-day process? I also experimented with some of these one-day recipes and have been much happier with my bakes that take a little more time. I've switched to starting things the evening before and baking the next day. Hopefully you will find something helpful in my (overly)long response!
Thank you so much for your suggestions! Your response is not overly long at all! I think there's a lot for me to think about in there. Flavour wise the bread was good but I'm in no hurry in these current times so can happily extend baking time. As you say, I'm not overly disappointed but feel I can aim for a little more!
I'll definitely try out a version with a little less starter. I've done overnight proof in the fridge before and now I think about it those results were often better, truthfully! I may go back to that in the near future.
As per the other comment, I'm going to look to use a stand mixer a little less and also look into improving my shaping as you suggested. I've started using a bench scraper recently and am definitely still getting the hang of that on the pre-shape!
Thank you again for your advice and encouragement!
Good afternoon,
In my limited experience, stand mixers do not go well with open crumb or good crumb structure, especially if you try to develop full gluten in the mixer before bulk fermentation. I had countless bad crumb loaves baked after working on my Kitchenaid to full gluten development. Many of them with the kind of crumb structure you describe
Then I decided to go to a very light mix in the Kitchenaid, followed by autolysis and further gluten development though Stretch & Folds (SF) and very long final proofing in the fridge . My crumb (and my baking self-confidence) immediately changed for good and I haven't looked back.
As my baking skills have improved, I return occasionally to a particular recipe from my bread school days that is mixed to full gluten in a mixer, and I get a much better crumb than before, and great oven spring, but mostly with small regular holes.
My personal conclusion, at my level of knowledge is that stand mixers and open crumbs aren't a match. I'm tempted to buy a mini arm mixer or an Ankarsum to see if I can mix open-crumb recipes in a machine (I'll go commercial some day, so automation is important for me) but I haven't taken the plunge yet.
I'm aware I'm addressing only a, part of your questions, but I hope this helps in any case.
But I'm definitely going to try your suggestion. I used to do it all by hand (Rubaud mixing) and found that quite tiring - but I like your suggestion to use a mixer for the first bit until incorporated - then to finish off by hand and incorporate more stretch and folds. Thank you very much for the advice!
I have some experience learning from professional bakers and the consensus seems to be that mixing to full gluten in the Kitchenaid will do more harm than good to the crumb structure if you're looking for open crumb. Arm or Spiral mixers are a different story though.
Another thing you can try on the KA is bassinage for high-hydration doughs: regardless of the (high) hydration in your dough, mix initially with 65% water only, autolyse, add salt and, little by little, the rest of the water on KA #3. Try to add the water inside the dough (make a cavity around the hook pour some water and close the cavity. If your water is on the walls the kneading is useless and it's better to finish things off by hand.
You should have good gluten development without too much mixing time (10 minutes of KA on #3 is IMHO the absolute maximum if you're shooting at open crumb, I always stop after 10 minutes no matter what gluten I have).
Some other good advice I've had from one of those friends-teachers of mine who does extensive consulting job is to always combine a KA mixing with a retarded bulk, to compensate things, and it works, but I don't like retarded bulks but retarded finals, this is why I rely entirely on SFs except for the very initial mixing.
Hope this helps and let us know how things turn out. Safe bakes.