Thinking about open crumb
Every now and then I go after open lacy crumb in my breads. Now, I'll be first to admit that I love my bagels, flat-breads, whole-wheat and all rye breads too! So, a lot of the time I'm not interested in open crumb at all. But, the first time I made a sourdough bread that had a dark, almost-burnt crust, and a light interior that was like a "web of crumb" held up by the crust, it was a bit of an "aha" moment. So, that's what other bakers were going on about, it isn't only an Instagram thing!
Lately, I've had a couple of things on my mind when baking the sort of loaves for which open crumb becomes a consideration - both things revolve around getting loaves that are more well proofed.
The first has been about building the levain so that it is vigorous and more capable of expanding the loaf to a large size before becoming too acidic. And, pairing that with keeping the hydration low and using a vigorous machine mix. So, a dough that will be capable of inflating well, paired with a strong levain.
The other thing is something I guess we all think of - it is what Paul recently called "loaves (that) felt light for their size" and what I think of as loaves that have a light hand-eye feel! My batard bannetons normally take about 800-850g of dough, but I've found that I can reduce that to about 750g of dough and just extend final proof longer until the banneton is filled to the same volume as before. For this bake it was 768g dough per loaf.
For the levain build here, I had a lovely bubbly very liquid 166% hydration rye levain leftover from making Danish rye a couple of days before. With a '3' stage build we'd normally want a stiffer levain, so at about 10pm at night this was made into a ~80% hydration levain by using only 9g of the bubbly rye levain with 125g of bread flour and 100g of water. The next morning it was almost ready to use (kept in proofer at 26C), but wanted to give it another 'quick' feed before using and to bring the hydration to about 100%. This feed was an additional 30g flour and 50g water, the relatively small amount of flour meant that it wouldn't be necessary to wait for too long before baking, and the levain was nicely tripled before using. I still aspire to the more classical 'french 3 build levain' at a much lower hydration (say 50%, salted), but then I guess we'd be looking at say 1:6 for the overnight feed, whereas, by keeping it a little more liquid as was done here I could go a lot higher (this is about 1:13?). Don't know which way is better, a higher feed ratio or a stiffer levain or if they are even mutually exclusive, and I wonder what your thoughts are!
When it comes to the 'vigorous' mechanical mixing I've been back on the food processor bandwagon for a while now and my mixer has been taking a break. I'll be the first to admit that the food processor felt 'chaotic' for me at first. I had disasters and ruined my old food processor too! Nowadays, except for having to work with the 'scary' metal blade things go pretty smoothly. I do about a two minute mix starting on slow and adjusting the dough every now and then. Dough is mixed for one loaf at a time to stay within the capacity of my food processor as well as to mix better. Gluten development is marvelous and because it is so fast, the mixing and washing of the food processor bowl and blade can be done within 15 minutes, even for two loaves.
For this bake the fermentation was fairly long - 7 hours 40 minutes - and still could have been longer - with the proofer set at 26°C. That time is from initial mixing of the dough until it went into the fridge overnight. The dough started a little cool as 15°C water was used for the initial mix by hand, then it had a 40 minute 'fermentolyse' rest in the fridge before going into the food processor and came out of the food processor at 24°C.
Crumb was good, open but not as open as my previous bread. And, next bake I'll tweak and push it even further... maybe up the hydration a percent and reduce the amount of dough for each loaf a touch too. After all, it is a long journey to crumb nirvana. But not all at once - the next loaf is going to be a whole-wheat loaf - so this will continue to be a slow interrupted journey in many stages.
-Jon
Comments
Jon. you are touching on a subject I'm very interested in. Like you, I don't usually want loaves that are too open and lacy. I prefer the taste when the crumb isn't too open, and I don't want butter and mayo to drip through. I have made some loaves that look like your photo - and that's an very good-looking loaf for sure - and we have probably all seen pictures of crumbs that are even more open than that, ones whose interior looks almost like a spider's web. But mostly my crumbs are more even, with smaller pores, even when the loaf has a very good volume overall.
As a long-time baker, I sometimes feel that I should be able to produce such open crumbs whenever I want. But I can't do it reliably. Grrr!
I almost always mix by hand and sometimes I wonder if using a machine would matter in this regard. I didn't realize a food processor could be so suitable (I dislike them and am always looking for a reason not to use them). Maybe it's time for me to reconsider.
OTOH, I've seen many cross-section pictures that appear to have lots of irregular holes, but in reality just show poor shaping technique. The holes happen when the various layers don't get merged well, and in between them the crumb is tight. That's not what I want.
I'm really looking forward to the responses to your post and if I learn anything I can contribute I'll post it.
TomP
Mariana, our very own guru of the food sciences shared some interesting food processor advice here.
In general though, I do think that hand mixing is somewhat more consistent for me than my mixer, provided I do slap and folds to develop the gluten!
-Jon
A couple of thoughts:
1. I think open crumb is easier to achieve with low rates of wholegrain flours - maybe 15% or less.
2.Your bulk time seems pretty long - mine are usually about 3.5 - 4 hours. Is that because you go for big bulk volume increases?
Lance
Absolutely, my bulk is normally 4 hours.
I was inspired by Joy ride coffee but failed to mention that! In this video he was at about 20% whole grain and had a super long ferment. Definitely what you and I would class as over proofed, in fact I don't even think he scored his bread. My bread here still had oven spring (not strong, mind you) and opened up. Perhaps what I'm after is really and over proofed bread without the flatness and sour taste, and maybe I need to admit to myself that is what I'm aiming for.
-Jon
Well, as we know, Jon, there is no right and wrong bulk duration or volume increase. Normal volume increases can be anything from 30% to over 100%. I just think there is more chance of open crumb, good loft and good oven spring (ie better looking loaves!) at lower % increases., but maybe improved flavour at higher % increases.
At the extreme, during my journey into authentic pain au levain I realised that there is actually NO bulk increase, because bulk only lasts for 1 hour. Of course this is a special case because the levain is added at 50% of the main dough flour, so 1/3 of the main dough will already be mature.
Lance
That crumb looks excellent, Jon. I would be really satisfied with that. Great to read about your multiple-build levain and processor mix method, very insightful. As you know all my breads are made by hand, so it's always so interesting to read about your techniques.
To my mind, a lacy, open yet even crumb requires a lot of mechanical gluten development (that cannot be achieved only through fermentation) and somewhat low hydration. The only time I care about developing gluten is when I make phyllo dough. For the longest time I would work on that dough like crazy, kneading it till window pane, but sometimes it still broke when I eventually rolled it out. After two years I realised that all I needed to do was decrease the hydration a lot to make a almost crumbly dough, leave it alone for half a day, and it can simply be stretched to window pane. No kneading at all!
This makes me think that some sort of lamination process together with maintaining a somewhat low hydration could be considered for the kind of crumb you want. I would be inclined to go with a stiff levain (but might avoid a third low-ratio build), increased autolysis, and moving some of the BF time to proofing time. But really, just thoughts and nothing proven!
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Amazing photo Lin, I'm going to file your idea away in my subconscious and dream up a way inevitably to use it to make a bread.
I bet you could make an interesting bread based off your phyllo dough method
-Jon
That first photo of your loaf is just gorgeous, both the loaf and the photography Jon. The crumb is excellent and although you might have been aiming for a lacier crumb (something that I’ve rarely if ever achieved) it is excellent nonetheless. I haven’t been baking hearth loaves for a while now, but I’ve always thought, wrongly perhaps, that one needed a relatively high hydration to achieve that.
Benny
That’s a very nice crumb. For a more open one a higher hydration will help and less whole grain flours. I bake with 60% or higher fresh milled so don’t expect anything more open than this. It’s also all about good fermentation and gluten development.
Yeah, I'm not willing to give up whole grain, as I find all-white bread flours typically more boring to eat.
I do think I can push the hydration higher, even keeping the same procedure, simply by dribbling some extra 'bassinage' water into the food processor. That'll be where I play next!
-Jon