Over-proofed?
Seems like my bread is regularly over-proofed; it doesn't spring up as much as I'd like and it's pretty dense.
The flavor is generally good. It's just not as airy as I'd like. See picture.
Deets:
Overnight leaven: 20g starter, 119g water, 96g flour. Floats fine in the morning.
Dough: leaven + 589g flour, 321 water, 2.5tsp salt.
Autolyse is forty minutes or so. Knead vigorously for ten minutes. Bulk fermentation on the loaf pictured was around three hours at about 75 degrees in the mudroom. Dumped, shaped, bench-rested for twenty minutes. Into a banneton proofing basket (with cloth liner rubbed with flour) for another two hours, give or take fifteen minutes. Rose quite nicely in the proofing basket, and the oven spring *seemed* good. Just the same, it's that dense crumb.
Again, the flavor is good; this loaf in particular is excellent. I just want more air. What's the dealio? Am I using too much flour during my knead? Fermenting / rising too long?
Thanks gang!
If you want an airier crumb perhaps experiment with a slightly higher hydration and seek out some videos on breads that achieve this. Following your recipe I personally think you're doing a great job!
Baking time and temps?
Personally I think your bread looks great but you might want to back off the proofing time a bit just to see what happens. My Pain au Levain formula is similar and my times/temps are close too. Where we differ is I proof for about 1 hour and get pretty good oven spring. Then too, there are days when the loaves can be less impressive and they are usually on the days when I am running behind and proofing too long.
Jim
for the responses, folks. I'll try both methods and see which one works best. Maybe both!
but I am always striving for a tighter crumb for use as sandwiches!
Honestly, what jumped out at me was you asking if you "used too much flour during kneading". This is already just shy of 65% hydration, which is fairly low for this type of loaf, so just how much flour are you adding? I've never added flour during kneading (I knead in the bowl, using a wet hand if the dough is really sticky), so am really curious as to how this works, and how much flour you are adding, and what the ultimate hydration level is.
Your timing all looks pretty good to my eye, so I'm thinking that what you might want to do is modify your technique to try for a more open crumb. My personal favourite method is by Trevor J Wilson on his Breadwerx site: http://www.breadwerx.com/ I think that you might find this particular article / video to be really helpful: http://www.breadwerx.com/how-to-get-open-crumb-from-stiff-dough-video/
I hope that you find his site as helpful as I have!