Better sourdough results: wet the dough before baking it (2024)
This little cheat compliments another great hack – covering the dough in the oven with a cake tin or lid. Wetting the dough causes the surface to steam. Covering it traps the moisture.
This partnership stops the bread from drying out on the surface in the hot air of the oven and forming a premature crust. Your bread rises more and produces a richer colour, becoming glossy on the surface.
There are other way of achieving this at home, such as spraying the inside of the oven with water in a spray bottle or placing a baking tray in the bottom of the oven and filling it with boiling water. I’ve tried all of these methods and each of them work. However, wetting your loaf is by far the easiest and produces the same results, if not better.
How to do it
1. Cup your hands under a running tap and fill them with water. Open your hands over the dough and gently rub the water all of it. If you don’t want to fill your hands with water (it can drip across the bench!), measure 2 tablespoons of water and pour it over your dough. Give your sourdough a gentle rub to spread the water around.
3. Using the sharpest knife you have or a razor blade, move deeply, quickly and confidently on an angle through the loaf. If you go slow, the knife will likely drag the dough.
4. Follow the instructions for your usual baking method:
Wetting the dough causes the surface to steam. Covering it traps the moisture. This partnership stops the bread from drying out on the surface in the hot air of the oven and forming a premature crust. Your bread rises more and produces a richer colour, becoming glossy on the surface.
And with high-hydration doughs like ciabatta or pan de cristal, a wet, soft dough with ample strength is a must. Too little water will leave them dense and, while still delicious, they won't have the thin crust and lacy interior that's the hallmark of the style.
The amount of water in a bread dough recipe affects the gluten development, which is the process of proteins in the flour forming long, elastic strands. More water allows for more gluten development, which results in a more airy crumb.
Too much water can also produce a damp loaf. Try less water with your flour. Uneven heat in your oven can be the culprit – if you loaf is nicely golden on the outside but gummy or moist in the inside, it's baking too quickly on the outside. Trying reducing the temperature you're baking at and bake for a bit longer.
How Wet Is Too Wet for Sourdough? It is possible to make 100% hydration (or even higher) so there's really no such thing as too wet. You just want to make sure it's not too wet for you to handle.
Wetting the dough causes the surface to steam. Covering it traps the moisture. This partnership stops the bread from drying out on the surface in the hot air of the oven and forming a premature crust. Your bread rises more and produces a richer colour, becoming glossy on the surface.
To make your bread soft and fluffy, another trick used by commercial bakers is replacing water with milk. Milk has fats which make bread softer. We at Old Bridge Bakery, carrying years of tradition of bread making, provide authentic and delicious loaves of bread in different flavours.
after baking, the underproof dough will be dense and deformed. while the dough that was ready will be fluffy and light. and the overproof dough will be flat and deflated.
Too little folding can result in weak dough. But too much folding can produce excessive tension and compressive forces. An over-folded dough might have a tighter crumb as the layers of alveoli push against each other and coalesce. In the worst case, excessive folding might cause a dough to tear under too much tension.
However, allowing your bread to cool adequately to room temperature will ensure that your sourdough has finished baking and that all the steam and moisture leaves your bread. This makes cutting your sourdough so much easier! If you've ever tried to slice hot sourdough bread, you'll know what I'm talking about.
Instant milk powder makes bread dough super soft and fluffy and also helps to give it a good rise. It also contributes to the dough staying nice and soft after baking for a little longer than a recipe that does not use milk powder.
Water is necessary for yeast fermentation and reproduction; softer doughs will ferment more quickly than dry doughs. Water is responsible for the consistency of bread dough.
Introduction: My name is Lidia Grady, I am a thankful, fine, glamorous, lucky, lively, pleasant, shiny person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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