HUTCHNDI Apr 22, 9:47 pm

Newsgroups: rec.food.sourdough
From: "HUTCHNDI" > - Find messages by this author

Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 00:47:28 -0400
Local: Fri,Apr 22 2005 9:47 pm
Subject: Bubbles
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Well, I do always slash my freeform breads. I figured as the loafpan
breads
were pretty much risen as much as they were going to, (and they really
did
not rise anymore in the oven) slashing was unneeded. The finished bread
had
pretty uniform holes throughout, the large bubbles were directly under
the
outer crust only, if I were so inclined to peel away the crust bubbles,
the
underlying bread retains a smooth surface curve. So the problem was
only on
the outer skin of the risen dough. Any more thoughts?
hutchndi
Reply


Slashing bread should be done when they are before fully proofed. If
you slash it when they are fully proofed they will not even collapse
once the blade hit the dough surface
What you stated was that the gas bubbles tend to be coarser near the
surface of the loaf than near the bottom to center. That is common with
such kind of lean recipes just flour, salt, leavening and water and
then baked on a bread pan.
Lean bread as I described previously have tougher gluten and tend to be
more elastic( due to the absence of fat) with the result that the
bubbles are compressed also to the point that when there is a weak
point they cells tend to merge to a bigger one. That weak point is
usually near the surface of the dough that has less pressure, notably
on the upper surface of the loaf, hence necessitating to slash it to
release and balance the pent up pressure.
The oven heat for such bread is high resulting in intensive crust
formation that the cells cannot expand in evenly but rather to compress
with each other that results also in merging.to bigger cell diameters.
Now you tell me that your loaves baked on loaf pan did not rise well as
the free form loaves, the reason is it was underweight for the pan
size you are using. Therefore the remedy is increase your dough weight
to eliminate that defect. Then you can be assured that your dough piece
will reach the rim of your loaf tin
Usually the loaves when molded should be half the pan depth.That is if
the loaf tin has straight edges and not trapezoidal. If the latter is
the type of loaf pan you are using say the 7x 5 x3 inch dimensions.The
effective pan volume is 105 cubic inches.
If you are using a sourdough whose effective bread specific volume is
only in the vicinity of 3.5-4.0 cubic inches per ounce compared to
4.5-5.5 for bakers yeast raised loaves.
Then .If you are using the 105 cubic inches pan volume then you will
need 26 ounces of dough weight so that it will be appropriate for that
pan size. For sourdoughs that don't rise well you will have to
increase the dough weight also. For DickA billowy loaves you may have
to decrease the scaling weight say to up to 20 ounces.
But the most important part in getting the optimum bread volume per
unit pan (volume)size is a test bake. Flour quality is also a factor.
Stronger flour tends to promote bigger volume than medium protein
flours. The technique also imparts some contribution to getting the
desired volume.
Then with a properly proportioned dough weight to tin volume you will
not be apprehensive that your dough will be fully proofed or even
exceeded the proofing height before you slash it.
You will be assured on a good oven spring and nice bold appearing
loaves with nary a big hole under the crust.
Another things also with using loaf tins you should mold it properly
ensuring that there are no entrapped large gas bubbles which will tend
to expand during proofing.
An exception is ...
If the proofing was done in humid conditions the dough tends to expand
better ( not much surface crusting due to drying)and is more flexible
due to the presence of moisture and you can bake the bread with minimal
or even no slashing.
The formation of large holes is lessened with such kind of humid proof.

Roy