May 15, 2020 - 9:01am
Why does this happen?
Hello everyone! I'm new to the group. I am a pastry chef at a restaurant downtown Denver and I make all of our breads in house. I don't have too much experience with bread, everything I know is self taught for the most part. Ive been having this issue with my country bread and cant figure out what causes it.
Typically out of the 4 loaves I make each day I always have 2 that dont split like the others (also what is that term??) I shape them the same, I score them the same, they all bake at the same time. I have been at a loss trying to fix it!
Do any of you have an idea on how to fix it? We are starting to sell the bread retail here soon and I'd love all the customers to have a beautiful loaf of bread!
Thanks!!
Lauryn
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Good afternoon. Quick question,
(1) is it always the loaves in the same locations in the oven that have this issue? It could have to do with oven temperature distribution, some spots in the oven being hotter than others. My educated guess is that you have a nice ear and open scoring in the hotter spots, while the colder spots deliver less-nice ears or no ear at all as in the picture.
Are you using an oven thermometer? Or does your oven measure actual temperature while it's in operation? What's your baking temperature? I have the impression that you could bake at a higher temperature, maybe your thermostat is misleading you. ?
-(2)Are you using steam (from the oven) or one of the multiple tricks those of us without a steam oven have to perform in order to have good oven spring and a nice ear in our breads?
- As a first step check(1). If you don't have a steam oven for bread try at least to (3) spray water on the loaves after scoring and before loading them into the oven and (4) ideally cover the loaves for the initial 20 minutes of the bake with a roast pan or some sort of metal dome.
On this last topic, please search the forum, there's a lot of great information here on how to keep your loaf skin humid during the initial part of the bake.
(5) I'm not an expert baker but I'd also suggest that you score your loaves deeper (and more uniformly deep) , which in combination with all of the above should help you improve the situation.
(6) In any case and being a Foodservice professional, your fastest route to success is to invest in a bread oven. There are small ones that are great and are in the 2,500 USD range (at least in Asia and in Europe I don't know in the States).
Safe bakes and good luck with the up and coming bakery division of your business. Hope this helps.
Thank you, your reply gave me a lot to take into consideration on my next bake.
I did a general reply, I'm not sure if all users will see that or not. I do bake at a pretty high temp, and I'm pretty positive its accurate. I think I will mess around with the baking temperature. I have always used the preset button the original pastry chef made and he created the recipes. After reviewing the mode it seems kind of weird..
I think my scoring technique is consistent, it's always been so strange! I still have so much to learn in this bread world
Thanks for your kind words. After reading further into the thread, I really believe it's a temperature issue as I stated in my first post, and this seems to be confirmed by some of the resident experts too. How your loaves are being heated (top, bottom etc) is also very important.
I'm wondering if you're baking in a convection oven? The kind used for pastry or for savory cooking in professional setups, where you can cook / bake multiple trays at a time?
If you are, how many loaves are you baking per tray and how many trays are you baking at the same time? Is the oven fan on when you bake your loaves?
If baking more than one tray at a time, have you tried baking a single tray, positioned in the middle of the oven cavity, and see what happens with oven spring and how the scoring opens?
Hope this helps and do let us know how things turn out with whatever changes you introduce ?.
Do the faulty loaves always come from the same spot in the oven? If yes, you have a baking problem. If no - you have a process problem.
Looking at the blisters, the two loaves without "ears" look like they got too much steam.
You guys are so smart! Who would have thunk! Too much of a good thing!
Discovered it on one or more of DanAyo's videos.
Lauryn: Go here to DanAyo's Youtube channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC7mXjnPpTDoVJxRdrG3ZeYw/videos
and watch his videos about "ears glued down" and "steaming". Counting his Bran Starter Video at the top as #1, those would be videos #4 through #12 that I am suggesting. They're short.
It's been a while since I watched them, so it may be about a _combination_ of both temp and steam, and dough hydration.
I suggest that there were probably small differences in your shaping and/or slashing that only became apparent when the bread baked. Perhaps the scoring was deeper or shallower. Or maybe the angle of the cut was slightly different. Or maybe one loaf was a little more or a little less degassed than another. The differences can be very subtle as they happen but become very apparent at the next stage.
The other suggestions have merit, too, so look into those. Just remember that the baker is the most important part of the bread-making process and requires the same scrutiny as any other part of the process.
Paul
Thank you all!!
I'm thinking I am having a user error. To answer a few questions...
I have noticed no difference in position in the oven, that was my first thought in trying to figure it out.
I start my baking at 460 with steam injection, 420 for 12 minutes and finish at 440. The baking instructions were set by the original pastry chef and I honestly never thought to change them.. until now.. maybe that's my next move.
I also work in a very unique kitchen. With our location being in a historical building we were only allowed electric ovens, hoods, flattop etc. I only get to work with 5 racks, half sheet tray sized.. I use what I have!!
So, how quick are you with your hands? I mean, if your kitchen is hot, proof is short(ish) and you take a lot of time shaping them it's entirely possible that the first loaf is overproofed compared to the last. Also, I agree with the suggestion that you might be overdoing it with the steam.
Suave, am I correct in thinking that too much steam can cool an oven?
Yes, not so much as water or ice (the latter leads to mind-boggling heat losses), but you lose some energy. However, the OP say that his oven is steam-injected, and that should be much more efficient.
"However, the OP say that his oven is steam-injected, and that should be much more efficient."
Yeah, but.... do steam-injection ovens inject "wet" steam at 212 F, or do they inject "super-heated" steam at whatever the current oven temperature is, 350 to 500 F ?
I'm pretty quick, especially since it is only 4 loaves each day.
I watched today, when the steam injects the oven stayed around the same temperature, it cooled down maybe 5 degrees and shot back up quickly.
This may seem a silly question, after all the complexity in previous answers, but are all the loaves baked in the same batch? If two were baked after a longer rise, that might explain it.
I wish that were it! I bake them all at the same time!
Lauryn, I can’t imagine why 2 breads would pop and 2 not. But your problem may go away if you get more oven spring. Without giant oven spring the magic won’t happen. Huge oven spring will cure loads of issues, including glued down scores, and minimal bloom. I struggled for years attempting to get ears and experimented extensively with scoring techniques, oven steaming, covered vessels, various stone and steel configurations, oven temps, and probably other things that slip my mind. I distinguished myself (in my mind) as the king of glued down ears :D Once I got oven spring, the problems vanished.
I learned the above by producing and watching a bunch of time lapse (in-oven) videos. Seeing is believing.
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/61181/tip-have-faith-oven-spring
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/61659/ear-bloom-and-oven-spring-skin-deep-beauty
I think Dave may have already suggested one of the above links..
This post assumes you are using sourdough. If this is incorrect, let me know.
When working with sourdough, it is important to ferment the dough properly. Err on the side of under fermenting. You want the dough to have plenty “gas left in the tank” when it hits the hot oven. I speak from experience on this one. For many years I thought that it was important to push the ferment in order to build gas in the dough. I thought that the gas filled cells would produce a light and airy loaf. I was wrong...
Bulk ferment until your dough is domed and slightly airy. Maybe 30-50% increase. That is really not a lot of expansion. Then shape and place the BF dough in your fridge overnight. Make sure that your fridge is cold 37-39F is ideal. When ready to bake, score and load directly into your pre-heated oven. Bake the dough cold. Then pull up a stool and watch the magic.
I sincerely hopes some of this helps.
Danny
Thanks Danny!
I'm thinking I need to review my shaping technique and adjust my baking temps.
Heres my process..
One container I mix bread flour, whole wheat flour, starter, and water. In another I mix bread flour, whole wheat, water and 5 grams of yeast. I let the 2 rest on the counter for 2 hours. Then I marry the 2 and add in salt. I pinch the dough and salt together until its smooth. That bulk ferments until its tripled in size, usually about 2-3 hours. Then I portion, do a loose shape on them, bench rest and then the final shape where I use stitching. Put them in the baskets and into the cooler over night. Score and bake the next morning.
I'm still trying to learn the process, rhymes and reasons of bread it's just hard when I'm the only one!
Take a look at the pointers in your image. The dough with the lightest and widest area of light color sprang the best. The dough with no light color turned out the worst of the group. If you’ll study the colored areas at the pointers you will notice that as the light color diminishes (comparing loaf to loaf), so do the oven spring and ears. There is a direct correlation to the color of the crust and the oven spring. There are actually 4 different breads. Two pretty good, 2 not. But even between the groups of two, there are slight differences in quality. Either your loaves are not receiving the same degree of heat (that would be my best guess) or your loaves are not entering the oven with equal amounts viable yeast and/or saturated CO2 gas.
I don’t think scoring or shaping is your problem.
1. Considering the possible heat issue - In this scenario were are assuming that the loaves have been fermented properly and equally.
In the case of the darkest loaf (worst of the four), it may have rec’d more top heat on the crust than the others. The extra heat will brown the crust prematurely. Once the crust browns, it hardens. A hardened crust is unable to expand any further.
Question - how were the loaves positioned in the oven? Were they baked at the same time?
2. The loaves have unequal amounts of CO2 and/or unequal amounts of viable yeast remaining in the dough at the time they are loaded into the hot oven.
Some of the loaves are better fermented than others. The 2 nice loaves expand and abake up nice. The 2 others are unable to expand because there is no “gas in the tank”. Since they don’t expand as much as the others the crust browns more evenly.
BUT, if you get huge oven spring, many problems instantly disappear.
Could any of this apply to your situation?
Danny
1. if convection or heat were an issue, then the glued down ears would occur in the same spot in the oven. But I think Lauryn said it occurs at different spots, and not on all loaves.
2. Proofing issue? If the issue is over-proofed loaves, but all loaves are treated equally, then... could there be a temperature variation based on location in the refrigerator during the cold proof? The loaves with oven spring are maybe getting cooled more in the refrigerator, maybe on a different shelf.