Gummy Interior on Sourdough
I am baking KAF's "Artisan Sourdough Bread made with a stiff starter" https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/artisan-sourdough-bread-made-with-a-stiff-starter-recipe
A friend and I both make the same recipe with these changes:
- Set oven to 500 degrees F. 1 hour before baking with Dutch Oven (DO) in the oven.
- Wet and crumble parchment paper, flattening out to put the dough on.
- Score the tops.
- Place the cold dough from the fridge on the wet parchment and lift it into the hot DO.
- Spray two pumps with water.
- Place lid on DO and Bake 20 minutes at 500 degrees F.
- Bake 20 minutes at 450 degrees F.
- Remove lid and finish baking at 450 degrees F.
Her bread weighs 700-800g after baking. Mine is over 1100g. The interior crumb looks the same between both our loaves. Mine is just wetter! The exterior crust is crunchy, and the bottom is very hard to cut.
We can't figure out what is different between our loaves. We live close by, so no change in weather or elevation.
We both use premium flour, either KAF or Bob's Red Mill.
My friend uses an Ankarsrum mixer. I use a Kitchen Aid. We both also will mix by hand on occasion.
I use a round Bannenton with 50% AP and 50% Rice Flour to prevent sticking.
I have also tried pulling the dough from the fridge, removing from the Bannenton and placing in a round glass baking dish about the same size as the DO and let it warm up for 45 minutes. No change in moisture.
I just can't figure out why my bread is so damp.
Please help!
Gummy breads baked in DOs is a common problem. Happens to me. One possibility is that the bread was sliced before cooling completely. Another possibility is my own theory that baking in an enclosed DO traps some of the moisture. Try this: After all the other baking is done, turn off the oven, remove the loaf from the DO and place it back in the oven. Leave the loaf in the oven for 10 - 15 minutes (or perhaps even longer). Doing so may allow the excess moisture in the loaf to "bake out." This technique has worked for me.
Let me summarise for clarity. There seem to be two parts to this problem.
One, you appear to be following the same recipe as someone else, but the result is very different.
I think this question is easier to address. Even if you're using the same flour, water, and recipe, possible differences include:
- Starter, if you don't share a starter
- Oven and/or dutch oven (Do you have a convection oven?)
- Control over dough development and fermentation i.e. the human element
To narrow it down, you could try baking the recipe in your friend's oven with her starter and see if there's any difference.
Two, the crust and crumb of your bread differs from your ideal:
- crumb is gummy/wet
- crust is crunchy (rather than thin/crisp?)
- bottom crust is hard (Is the colour darker than desired as well?)
- loaf feels heavy in the hand (?) for its size
One thing is odd in the information provided. The linked King Arthur recipe has a total dough weight of 1239 g if you just add up the ingredients. (Are you doing the step where some of the bread dough is reserved for the next bake?) Do you know what your actual total dough weight is before baking? Assuming 1239 g before baking, a bread 1100 g after baking would be ~11% loss, which is within normal parameters. On the other hand, 800 g after baking would be ~35% loss, which is very high. Almost unbelievably high.
Baking for longer at lower temp is the standard recommendation for gummy crumb. You could try uncovering the dutch oven earlier and removing the bread from the dutch oven to a (or several stacked) baking sheet. This should help with increasing water loss and reducing the thickness of the bottom crust. Then bake without the dutch oven at 400 F until the desired colour is reached. This may or may not help. Past some point extending the baking time is just going to result in a thicker crust and do little for drying out the interior.
In this case, other possibilities to explore include:
- Insufficient gluten development. Hard, thick crust would jive with this.
- Under-fermentation.
- Starter health, or lack thereof
- Insufficient cooling time.
Have you tried other recipes? Do you get crust/crumb more to your liking from them?
If you want further feedback on your current loaves, I suggest you post more pictures (pictures of the knife too), and more people are likely to chime in.
Jibs, 40 minutes with the pot covered sounds way too long. 20 minutes covered, max.
As another posted, if you sliced the bread before it completely cooled expect gummy crumb. Next time try to wait at least 3 hours or so after baking, or better yet overnight.
The image you provided isn’t very clear, but it sure looks really brown for such a small amount of whole wheat. Closeup images that are in focus are a great help for us when troubleshooting.
I agree with you Dan, 40 mins lid on is likely a bit too long, however, when I started to do time lapse videos of my bread, I noticed that the bloom continued until 25 mins. So now I steam bake for 25 mins whether it is an open steam bake or a dutch oven bake.
This is fascinating to hear, since usually it is said that oven spring happens during the first 10-15 minutes of baking. Yet I have recently noticed that after uncovering my dutch oven 20 min into the bake, there is substantial volume increase (noticeable to the naked eye sans video recording) for another 3-4 minutes or so. I wondered whether this was on-going oven spring or expansion triggered by uncovering the bread. But it was difficult/impossible to determine without visual access to the bread for those first 20 minutes.
May I ask how large are the loaves you steam for 25 minutes and how much longer you typically bake after venting steam?
Of course, my bread is usually around 900-950 g. After the initial steam bake @ 450ºF for 25 mins I'll vent the oven and drop the temperature to 425ºF and continue the bake for another 25 minutes give or take depending on the browning of the crust.
I haven't found any issue with gumminess of the crumb.
Benny
No, me neither. At least not anymore. But when I first started baking with sourdough instead of commercial yeast my bread was plagued with gumminess and no amount of low temp slow baking could get rid of it.
So @Jibsmans, my point was really that gumminess could be hydration/baking time or temp related, and it also could not.
I wonder if the conventional wisdom about the length of oven spring is in fact incorrect.
Apologies for the long delay - My wife and I moved from Point Roberts WA to Shelton WA, so I can't run tests with my friend. Also, I made an error in the recipe: This is what the recipe above says:
You are absolutely correct; I mistyped the recipe here.
I have also removed the bread from the DO, turned off the oven and let the bread sit in the oven for another 20 minutes.
The dark bread in the image is due to the gummy interior.
Thanks for your time responding.