No spring?
I haven’t baked in a while, so I turned to DL’s Country Classic Hearth Style bread since he calls it a learning recipe and I haven’t baked in a long time. Everything was going well, and I gave the final proofs the old poke test which indicated it was just about right, albeit 40 minutes early. Room temp was 78 degrees, as were all the ingredients as I went through the process (my daughter is away at school and I’ve had a thermometer setup for days so I fermented and proofed in her room). I used 8” bannetons with well floured linens that came off easily when I put them on the peel to slide in the oven on my well used baking stone which was heated with the oven for an hour. I scored them lightly with a very sharp carving knife, I quickly sprayed the water on the oven walls to create the steam, left it baking for 3 minutes and quickly sprayed steam again. I cooked them as prescribed by DL.
They’re cooling now, and they look nice and tanned, they are still 8” x 3” in size but started out at about 8” x 2.5”. Shouldn’t they be bigger/taller?
Very hard to say anything without seeing the crumb! Please post a picture of the crumb after you slice one of them and someone will surely diagnose the problem.
Here is the crumb after cooling close to 2 hours. 75% white, 25% whole wheat.
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It looks pretty good! A bit dense on the bottom... Can you expand on your baking procedure? What kind of oven do you use? Does it have heating a heating element on top? And I'd worry about the steaming method, unless your oven is extremely good at retaining steam just spritzing water is likely not enough, and afaik opening the oven to spritz again is actually worse than just spritzing once... Are you using a baking stone or steel?
I wonder if you’re getting enough heat into the bottom of the dough when baking. The bottom crust looks rather pale compared with the upper, that along with the denser crumb in the bottom half of the dough makes me think you aren’t getting enough heat into the bottom of your dough.
Benny
I have a new GE Cafe dual fuel range with an electric oven, I baked on a stone I bought at KA years ago, the heating element is on the top, and with my baking stone is on the shelf the top of the baking stone, that the bread baked on, is almost perfectly in the center of the oven. The color on the bottom is the same as the color on top.
Should I have let it proof longer?
DL’s recipe calls for the spritzing. Maybe a pan on the floor of the oven with ice cubes thrown in at the same time as the bread would have been a better steaming method- obviously, no matter how quickly I can spritz I lose heat opening the door.
Try moving your baking stone lower in the oven. If you can get more heat into the dough at the bottom it will help with the oven spring a lot.
… after the first 20 minutes of baking at 450, DL’s recipe tells you to lower the temperature to 400. Do you agree with that? Should I go with 450 the entire time?
I think that your baking temperature sounds fine, but by having the dough so high in the oven, the top crust might be setting a bit earlier than is ideal and not enough heat into the bottom to give good spring.
Is the electric oven heated just by an element in the top? Is it fan assisted?
It looks like the scores opened a bit from one of the photographs. But if the crust forms too early on, or dries out too much (a problem with fan assisted ovens) then the crust doesn't stretch enough for the loaf to rise fully. This results in flying-saucer shaped loaves, which is not exactly what your's look like, but I can't see precisely. Has the flat bottom lifted around the edges?- that is a sign of the crust inflating like a balloon rather than opening out. ETA - I now see you have crumb shots, the shape looks fairly conventional.
If that is what is going on, more steam or a dutch oven would help. There are some good threads here on how to get lots of steam - damp towels, trays of lava rocks (the things that go in artificial log fires) doused in boiling water and so on. I am not an expert in such techniques as I use a dutch oven. I gave up trying to use steam to cure this problem with my fan assisted oven as I have a double oven with a small top-and-bottom heat oven which is better for baking.
Lack of bottom heat also looks like it might be an issue, but that isn't a problem I have with my oven so I don't know exactly what it looks like.
TIM
No fan assist- it was on regular bake. Maybe more steam is the issue. There was no separation at the bottom crust. Next I’ll go to a whole wheat sourdough and focus on improving the steam. I rather bake in the oven on my baking stone than go out and buy a DO ffrom which I’ll want to progress.
The bread tastes fine. It’s just s little boring, but it is 75% white.It’s much better toasted with salted butter, like many breads.
Ah well. Another thing you can try if it is the top heat drying out the top of the loaf too much is giving it a sunshade. If there is enough height, place a small baking tray above the loaf to shield it, then cook initially on max. You want the heat, but not directly on the top of the loaf, at least initially.
Hmmm . . .
That oven is interesting, but then most North American ovens are somewhat odd to me in Australia and, if I am understanding the marketing material correctly, seem to have far fewer functions than ours in Australia so forgive me if this is an odd suggestion, but . . . can you not just turn on the bottom element and have that only?
I've gone through the manual for your model and it's not super helpful but does have this:
That would imply that it is using more of the lower element so should be more-or-less exactly what you want: strong heat from the base, less so from the top. Perhaps simply place your stone on the lowest shelf.
Depending on the stone, some heat better and/or quicker than others so one thing I am now doing is starting the pre-heat with just the FULL grill ('broil') and with the stone on the very top rack so it is getting saturated with heat, then moving it to the baking position lower third and turning the oven to my normal bake setting for the remaining pre-heat, to ensure the bottom element is good and hot and the walls are properly heated.
That might give it a boost to ensure that, from the moment it goes in, there is good heat from below.
A little spritz of water at the beginning is not much to begin with and it will quickly vent. I cover the vent on my oven for the first 10 minutes, before pouring water into a small cast iron pan on the oven floor after loading the bread.
Hmmmmmmm…..
Cover the vents? Couldn’t that possibly cause a temperature increase?
For other breads, like PR’s whole wheat and rye sourdough recipes, and have preheated a cast iron skillet on the bottom of the oven with the stone and added hot water. I had a different oven then and had basically the same problem even after I became better at shaping. Delicious bread, but not much spring.
How do you folks feel about those lava rocks and the wet wash cloths techniques?
Dan- you red my manual? How kind of you to go so far! I’ve only had the oven for a few months and with a full kitchen and bath remodel going on I’ve been too busy to do my own research on my oven. We used to have a GE Profile electric range, but myy son is a culinary student and we just went through the process of getting a permit, plumber, etc. and had our dual fuel installed. He loves it, but I obviously need to read the manual like you. I will definitely lower the shelf On which I place my stone. So that means steam pan above?
I made 2 honey oat loaves the other day and baked in the center. Oven spring was meh, but the flavor was there. I played with the recipe and switched from APF to 1:1:1 APF: Whole Wheat: Bread flour (to help the rise with the whole wheat. Trumbull is what you would expect for sandwich bread, but the taste was excellent. Next week I’ll go 1:1 APF:WW on a lower shelf? I always use KAF.
Our Australian ovens are so different to yours that if I go around assuming they are similar it's just going to result in massively unhelpful advice!
My own oven has a steam setting which seems to work well enough and it also has a little 'pool' area at the base that is specially designed to pour water into so sometimes I use that, too.
For steaming, I believe there is someone who developed a method using soaked, rolled up towels in a bread pan - that might be useful as you could put one beside your loaf or even on both sides, if there's room.
The suggestion already provided to put a tray above is a good one and one I use frequently as, for all my oven's 16 functions, there's no setting that heats the lower element more than the top. Here's my oven in just after a bake today (still cooling!):
oven_tray_01.JPG
For your flour, AP is fine for bread by itself. Your Nth American flours are higher-protein than our Australian flours such that your AP is roughly equivalent to our specialty 'bread' flour! (And we have been doing okay with what we have.)
BUT, if you have easy access to the higher-protein KAF 'bread' flour then why not use it?
This is even more of a good idea when mixing other flours in - like whole wheat - as that (for several reasons) will negatively impact gluten formation. Thus, using the higher gluten 'bread' flour for the white portion makes good sense.
d
CT, if your oven lets you bake without the fan, you most certainiy have a lower heating element (in addition to upper element) even if you can't see it. It would be under the floor of your oven chamber.
You can verify the location of heating elements in the manual.
Also, you can start to pre-heat an empty oven, with nothing on the floor of the oven, and place your hand near, not touching, the floor, and feel the heat. You may also see the red elements through holes in the floor, or spaces between floor plates.
If so, you're about the fourth person this year who has come here to TFL with a "hidden" lower heating element and was unaware it was there. So you have a common situation.
Do not place anything on the floor of such an oven, or it will mess up the heat flow, and will cause problems. The steam pan must be on a rack, not on the floor.
And, any baking stones, steels, pans, or sheets need at least 1.5" or 3.7 cm clearance from side walls, back wall and oven door. This is to allow proper air flow and heat distribution.
Happy baking. And bon appétit!