Pepperoni bread - seam always bursts and leaks
This is my second attempt to post this. Not sure where the first one went.
My son loves pepperoni bread and I try to bake it often. But most of the time, the seam seal does not hold and the cheese and pepperoni bursts out the side and it looks like a big "tumor" on the side of the loaf, and never mind the mess all over the pan. Is there a recommended way to seal the seams on this type of bread?
Also, I don't have a lot of extra time and often need to leave the house as soon as I pull a loaf of bread out of the oven. If I cover it with foil, it gets soggy...same with plastic. But I don't want it to get hard and crusty either, so I feel I need to cover it while I am gone. Often this is first thing in the morning. What it the proper thing to do with a loaf of bread fresh out of the oven, if you are leaving the house for the whole day?
If you are talking about a swirl bread, i.e. a loaf you roll out, fill with your cheese and pepperoni and roll it back up like a log. One way to prevent "blow outs" would be to use a bit less filling and proof fully. Under proofing causes dough to rip at unusual points and that would cause in this case, your filling to spill out.
Also make sure the seam is on the bottom of the bread while in the final fermentation and baking.
Another thought would be to try scoring the loaf lightly on the top right before placing in the oven as well. If you score too deep (if you are making a swirl style bread), you run the risk of the goods spilling out of the score marks.
By proofing, do you mean rising time? I do always allow the dough to rise fully before I roll it out and add the cheese and pepperoni. Perhaps I am using too much filling...but it's the same amount that the recipe (it's a well-published, common recipe) calls for. And I do always place the loaf seam-side down. I may try the scoring thing and see if that helps. It's a pretty thin dough though by the time I roll it out - you are right in that it would be a mess if it split open!
You should try allowing the dough to go through the bulk fermentation fully, then when it is ready to be shaped; roll out the scaled dough, fill (which may need to be cut back), roll up, place seam side down and allow to go through a full final proofing. Score the dough lightly with three slashes on the top side when ready for the oven.
Here are some loaves I made/baked at work this Monday. Sorry this was done on my phone. On the bottom you can see some swirls I made. Notice how some are oozing out of the cuts? That's from cutting a bit too deep. Also a bit spilled onto the paper as well. The spillage was from under proofing them since they contained frozen raspberries and I didn't take that into consideration well enough during the final proof. The result was a rip on the side of the loaf causing me to lose valuable filling.
Love to hear back on your progress. I make literally hundreds of 'swirl breads' at work weekly and feel I have a wee bit of knowledge to lend on the topic. Though I am no guru.
I would say that you should know, after baking all those loaves!! I'll try your suggestions and see how that works. Thanks!
Whoops
The bread is just exploding with deliciousness and joy! Do you use parchment paper? That helps the mess factor significantly, since the exploded cheese and pepperoni may well be delicious crunchy bits of cheesy goodness and deserve love.
When I take bread out of the oven, I put it on a rack and even when I'm home I have to wait a couple hours for it to "cool off" (during which the inside is actually finishing baking). The crust does a remarkably good job of holding the moisture in, so before it's cut I don't worry about it at all.
If you're going to be gone for way way longer than those couple hours and are really concerned, one suggestion is to invert some sort of huge plastic bowl or cake cover or drawer over it. (I "free-cycled" an underbed plastic drawer from a neighbor's garbage can for covering things.)
Different breads keep for different lengths of time, depending on both the shape and the ingredients. French baquettes will only last a day (some say only a few hours) no matter what you do. Many breads will last three days, and a few will last a week (or even a month in extreme cases). But mostly for more than three days you'll want to bag the loaf tightly and freeze it. When thawing it out the most common practice is to leave the bag sealed until the loaf is completely thawed, although some (David?) recommend opening the bag right away and getting some help from a warm oven.
If despite your best efforts it's gone stale on you, you can always un-stale bread with judicious use of a microwave. (This may sound crazy: it's dry, so nuke it??? -- but everybody's experence is it works really well.)
Yes, all our pans are lined with really durable parchment paper.
I got an idea.
Fill only the inside half, that way when you roll it up you have and extra layer of dough around the outside of the loaf to hold in all the good stuff.
Another idea would be to just give up and give in... cut the rolled log through with a string or guitar wire and make rolls. Parchment line a pan and cover with the rolls and top with some of the cheese. They can't bust out because they're already busted!
:9 Welcome to TFL!
Mini is right, and I should have pointed that out.
When I fill my swirl loaves at work, I leave about 2 1/2 to 3 inches at the top empty to allow the dough to seal and give some extra support of raw dough to hold in the goods.
If you were to roll out the dough and fill to the top, roll up and bake, you run the risk of having to many thin layers of dough.
Well I do always leave a border, but perhaps I don't leave enough! Good thought - thanks!
I always have the same problem, no matter what I do. Now while is is still warmI just take my bench scraper and push the oozing filling back in the loaf and kind of reshape it. I also do not slash it just put a line of holes with a instant thermometer.;)