Dough bulk volume increase effect

A recent comment by Michael Lily regarding dough bulk volume increase got me thinking about a topic I have already given a lot of thought to - volume increase during bulk and it's effect on the final bread.

In that post Michael suggested a bulk volume increase of 20% to improve oven spring, which I would agree with, but I think there may be a downside in terms of flavour development.

I'm coming to the conclusion that low bulk volume increase, eg 20-40%, gives good oven spring, good ears, good loft, good open crumb, but maybe a lack of lactic flavour deveopment. Bulk volume increase of 60-100% gives good lactic flavour development, but poorer oven spring, poorer ears, lower loft and a more closed, regular crumb - "frog spawn crumb", as I have christened it.

This can be quite well tracked by measuring the pH of the final bread - mush up 6g crumb + 40g distilled H2O and take pH.

More musings may follow!

Lance