Stop Degassing Your Sourdough During Shaping and Discover How it Affects the Crumb

so today i'm going to be looking at the impact of pressure the pressure that i use when i'm shaping my sourdough now over the last few videos i've learned so much about the bulk fermentation and proving stages and i still feel like i'm only kind of scratching the surface and these experiments have been to improve my own baking using my everyday sourdough recipe and getting that fermentation and proving period dialed right in it's had a dramatic impact on the quality of the crumb it's beautifully soft and it's light and it stays moist and fresh for longer and it's the first time my knife blade comes out absolutely clean after cutting the loaves so today i want to look at shaping i'm going to make a double batch of dough i'm going to bake two sourdough loaves one shaped with my normal relatively gentle approach and the other using more pressure into my bowl goes 548 grams of water this is followed by 208 grams of sourdough starter at 100 hydration and after a quick start i'm adding 826 grams of strong white bread flour with a protein content of 13.2 in goes 19 grams of salt i bring everything together with a spoon wet my hand and then bring the mix into a rough dough making sure there aren't any dry spots or pockets of flour now my room temperature today is 19 degrees celsius 66 degrees fahrenheit and my proving chamber is set to 25 degrees celsius 77 degrees fahrenheit the dough gets covered and it's going to sit in the chamber for 15 minutes after the rest i'm going to knead the dough just for a couple of minutes i'm not trying to build any strength at this stage my goal is just to make sure the starter is well distributed and the dough is nice and smooth i'm using a good strong white bread flour and the dough is going to have plenty of time to build all of the strength that it needs during that five hour bulk fermentation i'm going to remove 100 grams of dough to monitor the volume increase and the main dough will get a quick shake it's going to go back into its bowl after covering this will sit in the chamber with the control dough to begin the bulk fermentation the dough will get two giant sets of stretching and folding the first at 30 minutes into the bulk fermentation and the second set one hour into the bulk fermentation you can already see how much strength the dough has just after 45 minutes i love working with this specific dough it's easily manageable and it feels really nice to work with now between stretches the dough is going to sit covered back in the chamber the dough has increased to 75 percent of its original volume and it's time to shape i divided the dough into two dough balls one and a half hours into the bulk fermentation it wasn't strictly necessary for this experiment but it has become a bit of a habit over the last three weeks through the experiments in the other videos so this first shape is how i would normally handle the dough at a 75 increase in volume for this specific recipe the dough is well inflated but it still feels strong it hasn't relaxed or started to sag and it's easy to shake firmly without degassing the dough gets a quick bath in rice flour before being transferred seam side up into the basket now i'm going to be a bit firmer with a second piece of dough intentionally pushing it with my fingers i guess evenly compressing the dough would be the easiest way to explain it i'm not battering it to pieces but i am being deliberately firm while still trying to produce the best loaf i can and to be fair this dough still feels really nice and it certainly retains its volume same process for this dough a quick bath in rice flour and it lays in the basket seam side up so here it's easy to see the difference in volume between these two doughs and we will see what the outcome is very soon they're both going to get covered they're going to go back into the chamber for a two hour proof in the basket before being in the fridge for 18 hours so it's the next day and i've placed my baking stone in the oven and it's been preheated to 220 degrees celsius or 430 degrees fahrenheit it's been set to bake mode the loaves will bake one at a time for 20 minutes covered and 25 minutes uncovered and i'll make sure that stone is back up to temperature between the two bakes now i can definitely see a difference between these two doughs the one that was compressed during shaping it's got a dome top and it looks like it's got a bit more volume the other looks flat and kind of out of energy so let's take a guess right now what do you think will happen what result do you think i'll get after baking so first i'll bake the dough which i shaped with my normal kind of gentle approach and the other will sit in the fridge it covered now this one bulges outwards as it hits the peel and the top slightly domes in after scoring and the second well the second dough still bellies outwards as it sits on the pill but i'm not quite sure that the top caves in as much so let's have a little look at these loaves so the first loaf out of the oven is the one that was shaped gently and the second one is the one i applied more pressure to well i know which one i prefer at this stage but what springs to mind about the crumb when you look at these do you think that one of them's kind of got a telltale sign so this is the loaf that i shaped with my normal routine i guess i'm really pleased with the shape although i'm still not 100 with the way the dough opens up during baking but the crust and the color as spot on but my aim is to try to keep a pretty regular crumb and avoid any big tunnels or craters and to be fair i'm quite happy with this apart from that one pocket on the side the crumb suits me really well now this is the second loaf it looks pretty good i didn't get an even spring but there is a slight bulge at the top of this loaf did you spot that before now i used to get a lot of these in my loaves and here you can see why i've got this open pocket at the top of the crumb where the loaf is bloomed open now i was thinking that applying more pressure during the shaping would even out the dough leaving it to prove in a more organized manner producing a more organized crumb but to be fair i'm happy with both of these loaves and they both taste absolutely fantastic but certainly for this specific dough i know which method i prefer but i urge you to test it yourself see what works for you see what works for your baking now i'm still working on perfecting this specific loaf and very soon i'm going to be comparing the scoring processes to see if i can finally get that opening that i'm looking for while still retaining a really good ear let me know what's been going on with your bacon what have you been experimenting with a huge thank you for watching i'll see you again very soon stay tuned

Channel: Culinary Exploration

Views: 117,515

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Id: L95xJ_3E3Xc

Length: 6min 57sec (417 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 30 2022