Slow Dough: Real Bread: Bakers' secrets for making amazing long-rise loaves at home - Chris Young (2016)

Troubleshooting

Don’t Panic!

There will be times when things don’t go quite the way you’d expected but don’t worry - this happens to the world’s best bakers. Though some industrial loaf fabricators may beg to differ, baking isn’t an endlessly replicable chemistry experiment. It involves working with natural ingredients with natural variations, which you’ll be doing in a domestic kitchen that, at a guess, isn’t a computer-controlled industrial loaf production unit.

Printed recipes are always limited by having to describe in words some things that can only be explained by hands-on experience; even visual media - photos, diagrams or video - have limitations. Really, the best way to learn and improve your loaf-making skills, and how to put things right when they go wrong, is by spending time alongside a skilled baker. If you’re keen on this baking malarkey, then we recommend taking a bread-making class or course (or two: all bakers do things differently and you’ll learn something from each), where your tutor will be able to say “here, feel this dough” and your hands will let you know and understand what the phrase “kneaded enough” or “fully proved” actually means.

But, we’re here in this book together, so let’s have a go at a few of the more common things that might not work out and some of the most likely causes.

Dough doesn’t rise enough

Not Enough Water

Bread recipes in some domestic baking books produce low-hydration doughs: that is, they have relatively high flour to water ratios. This will be exacerbated if a “stickyphobe” baker throws armfuls of flour around to dust the work surface, dough and hands during production. Such “tight” doughs will be less stretchy than doughs that have a higher proportion of water. As Andrew Whitley says, “the wetter the better!”

Not Enough Time

A recipe isn’t a law: baking is as much an art as a science. Just because one recipe says the second proof for a particular loaf is two hours, doesn’t mean you must put it in the oven after 120 minutes, regardless of whether or not it’s ready to bake. If you don’t think the dough has risen enough, give it a while longer.

The baked bread is deformed

Poor Shaping/Moulding

Professional bakers don’t just roll dough into balls and chuck them in bread tins: they mould it carefully to create an invisible structure of tension around and within. See Shape on pages 20-21.

Under-Proved

Dough that’s put in the oven before it’s fully proved will expand in the first few minutes of baking much more quickly and unpredictably. This can cause it to bulge unevenly or even burst in places you didn’t want it to.

Over-Proved

Conversely, dough that’s been left to ferment too long can collapse when baked.

Poor Slashing

If you’re slashing, each stroke should be done in a single, decisive movement. Sawing backwards and forwards will deflate your loaf and make a mess, and if the cut is too shallow it won’t create an adequate “fault line” of weakness and the burst will happen elsewhere.

Loaf very heavy/dense

A loaf that’s fluffy and really large for its weight might suggest that the baker has used artificial additives to achieve this, and so a denser loaf can be taken as one sign (though not a guarantee), that it’s Real Bread: but nobody wants to be eating a brick, so consider the following possibilities:

Higher Fibre Flours

Bran interferes with gluten development, partly because it means that the percentage by weight of the flour that can form gluten is lower than in white flour, and partly because flakes of it create physical barriers to gluten strands forming and cross-linking.

Over-Enriched

Oils, fats and sugars all interfere with gluten development. Use too much and the loaf won’t rise properly. One technique that can help is to make the flour, water and yeast into a dough first, to get the gluten development underway before adding the enriching ingredients.

Under-Proved

Putting dough into the oven before it’s ready will result in a heavier loaf. Next time, allow to prove for longer or adjust the amount of yeast you use or raise the proving temperature. Of the three, the first is preferable.

Under/Poorly Baked

If your oven is too cool for the type of dough you’re baking and/or you don’t leave it in long enough, it won’t bake through properly. Your loaf might not only be dense, it could also be raw in the centre. If on the other hand your oven is too hot for that type of dough, it could bake or even burn (a particular risk with enriched doughs) on the outside before it’s cooked through. Some professional bakers use dough thermometers to be sure that loaves are fully baked at the centre.

Retarded Dough Not Left to Warm

If you retard your dough, you must take it out of the refrigerator and leave it long enough to get back up to, or above, ambient temperature before baking.