September 12, 2024 - 4:04am
Crustiness and ears
Lately I've been noticing a pattern on my loaves of bread. It seems like the part of the crust where the ear forms (the part where the surface is ripped open and slowly exposes more of the insides) usually stay crusty for longer than the rest of the crust. I live in a pretty humid place so I lose the crispyness of most of my crust in 2-3 hours, even when I bake my bread pretty dark (to the point of burning).
But the part where the ears rip open seem to last quite a bit longer being crusty, 5-6 hours in and the ear are still nice and crispy, whilst the rest of the crust have turned soft. Why does this happen? It seems to happen to all my breads no matter the formula.
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Those ripped parts are thinner than other places, and stick up into the hot even air more, so they get cooked more. I'm pretty sure that's the reason.
TomP
It's in those areas where there's less air that the crust stays crispy longer. When moisture gets on the bread, it often soaks into the thinner parts of the crust first, while the areas where it’s torn can stay crispier. It might be worth trying to cool the bread in a draft or even on a rack to keep it crispy for longer.
It has more to do with the humidity than the bread. All you can do is lower the humidity - if you can. Good luck! Enjoy!
Thanks for the replies, after thinking about it I now think the main reason is just the torn parts just has more mass of dried crust (with all its scraggly lines) compared to the smooth parts, so the crust doesn't soak the humidity as fast. But I just found it odd that the pale golden parts of the torn crust last just as long or even longer being crispy than the almost burnt part of the smooth crust.
I already cool my bread on a cooling rack, and use a fan to speed up cooling most of the time, but I can't really control the humidity factor as my house is well ventilated to the outside envoirment (my envoirment being tropical and coastal). But I already accepted the fact that my bread is going to lose it's crust anyways in my envoirment, again I just found it odd that the ear and torn parts of the crust would stay crusty longer than the rest of the crust when it seems like it shouldn't.
If the humidity is a problem - try not making an ear. Remove the problem! Enjoy!
The rate at which the crust disappears is not a problem for me, if I don't make ears on my bread then I would still lose the rest of the (now all smooth) crust in 2-3 hours, I don't see any problem being solved. I think it's good thing that the ear would stay crusty for longer (plus ears look nice), I just thought it was an odd phenomenon though, not an actual problem.