Troubleshooting sandwich bread texture
Hello All,
I have been trying to perfect a loaf of sandwich bread for about 2 months now and baked about 20 loaves so far.
I try to record my recipes and methods, but most of the time don't record everything.
Out of these 20 odd loaves of white sandwich bread, only one ended up turning out magnificently and I cannot for the life of me remember what I did differently, but I'm pretty sure I used the following recipe:
330ml of cool tap water
6gm of fine sugar
9gm fine salt
10gm extra-virgin olive oil
420gm of Wallaby Baker's Flour (11.9% protein)
25gm skim milk powder
20gm soy flour (home made: simmered, peeled, dried beans, then ground up to a flour)
12gm vital wheat gluten
3gm IDY
Method:
Combine water, IDY, sugar, oil, skim milk powder, bread improver, soy flour and vital wheat gluten and whisk in mixer bowl. Add all the flour and knead in the mixer for a few minutes until combined and let rest for 30 min.
Resume kneading in mixer for 8-10 minutes on med-high while adding all the salt gradually. Stop kneading once a very clear, translucent windowpane is achieved (I read about "intensive kneading" on this post).
Remove dough from mixer, form into a tight, smooth ball and place in a cling-wrapped bowl until triple in volume (not height).
Roll out dough with rolling pin, popping all bubbles and essentially compacting the dough again or... place in mixer and knead again for a few mins. Form and tight ball and let rest for 15 minutes, before shaping into a tight loaf (like this guy) and placing into a loaf tin.
Let it rise about 2.5 times in volume as it's mostly, but not completely risen out of the tin. I'm aiming for the bread to rise another 25-30% in the oven.
Create steam in the oven with lava rocks, spray the loaf with water and bake at 200C (... I think! I've tried 220, 200, 180C, all with similar results).
When I baked this perfect loaf, ironically, my oven completely died halfway! So I had to take the tin and place it in boiling water in a frying pan to finish it off. By that stage it had already grown into a full size loaf, just the inside needed its baking to complete.
Now... I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I DID DIFFERENTLY. Every single loaf before that and after that has turned out a little too dense and quite crumbly.
Can you help me figure out what I may have done differently? Could I have left out an ingredient in the list above? Could I have added too much of something? Could I have risen/proved the dough differently? Maybe I didn't knead so intensively then? I am pulling my hair out over this!
I really appreciate your help and thank you in advance! :)
Here are the good and then "bad" bread slices. There might be some lighting differences.
Great bread
Not great bread
