The pursuit of an airy crumb
I’ve been baking sourdough for a short time now - I’m coming up on my 13th loaf. And, I find that, if I limit myself to the basics, I can usually get a loaf with a decent crumb. But I wasn’t content with my results. So, I turned to Reddit:
Comment
byu/antc1986 from discussion
inSourdough
More hydration == more holes.
But, after baking other loaves (that are not sourdough), I started wondering if this was truly the case. Why wasn’t I getting similar results with other high-hydration recipes? Was there something special about sourdough?
Surely I was doing something wrong. Thus, I did a little more research. It seems that an airy crumb is caused by a multitude of things:
- Being gentle with the dough. We don’t want to push out all the bubbles created by fermentation (this means no degassing!)
- Allowing the dough to ferment for an appropriate amount of time. How long is long enough? There are several signs that point to a nicely fermented dough:
- Smooth surface
- The presence of a “domed” shape
- The dough should be jiggly
- Proper shaping
With that in mind (and time on my hands), I baked a loaf of sourdough. Nicest crumb I’ve achieved, thus far. I decided to try the same techniques with a slow-yeasted bread - and got similar results (but not quite as nice - it’s something I’ll have to look into).
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