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This bread tastes fantastic, but obviously I did something wrong. I'm thinking that either my starter wasn't ripe enough, or I over-proofed it? Would love some feedback.
I have done the same thing and I think it's caused by scoring the dough too deep. I no longer score bread baked in a loaf pan except for a very shallow decorative score.
That looks like it was underproofed (relatively dense crumb on bottom, more open on the top. I've not done that recipe but did you do the poke test to see if it was ready or over-ready? Here's an excellent video on how to judge proofing:
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Looks to me that they didn't score theirs down the middle and you did ... zzzz .... zzzz ..... zzzz. ... . Their crumb is a little bit finer than yours (oh the humanity!) zzzzzzz ... zzzzz .... zzzzz .... zzzzzzzzz ... oh, sorry. Other than the fact that your loaf looks just fine, your loaf looks just fine ... congrats!
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You don't really expect to cook something and have it come out the way the picture looks, do you? I mean, there are a couple of people here who probably have stuff come out looking better than the picture, but I bet the bakers and photographer went though dozens of loaves to get the one that looks "picture perfect". That's like expecting your whopper to look like the one in the ad. Or your car to come with that beautiful woman in the passenger seat.
Every time Ipull food from the kettle that looks most excellent I say to the wife “ where’s that guy that takes the menu pictures?!”….This doesn’t happen a lot…
hoovarmin As I understand food photography that may be a fake made just for the occasion. I forget where I saw it but it was a documentary on food photography. They showed them building a fake cheese burger for an add. It was mostly colored wax. The picture would make your mouth water but it was a fake. I had much the same experience years ago with a picture on a dating web site.
So, the loaf might taste good but it IS flawed. That's no big deal, everyone makes mistakes (I have another post in mind about the loaf I messed up two days ago) but the only way to learn is to do and, when it doesn't turn out, try to figure out what went wrong. Unless you REALLY mess up, you can eat your mistakes. Even if a bread won't work for whatever purpose you had in mind, you can always use it for croutons etc. It's the bread equivalent of "damn, this brisket is dry. Time to make chili!"
The problems above are not due to scoring or lack of dough. Scoring a bread, even a pan bread, won't cause it to collapse like that. Now was it that there wasn't enough dough; that loaf has a proofing issue which you can see by the way the crumb is tight at the bottom and relatively normal at top plus the collapse.
Judging proof is hard at the beginning - the poke test video above is a good start. I'd also not let bulk go on TOO long, but you want the dough to be light and airy and to show bubbles. If you shake it, it should kind of jiggle.
Last edited by rickgregory; December 8, 2022, 11:47 AM.
Here's a photo of the last loaf I scored deeply. Look familiar ? Since then I have gotten shallower and shallower on my scoring. Now I normally just use a decorative score, but since today was bread day, I decided to score about 1/4" deep. Edit to add that these are from the same recipe.
Scoring lets the bread expand upward due to oven spring. You get good spring in both cases, Ron. FWIW I don't score my pan loaves much anymore. But If a bread collapses, that's not due to scoring as I understand it, but to (usually) overproofing.
Some other tips:
1) Steam the oven. If you don't, the top crust can set prematurely, restricting oven spring
2) If an oven is convection, turn off the fan (otherwise the steam gets removed.)
3) If an oven uses both top and bottom elements to bake, try turning the top element off if you can.
On proofing, don't go by time unless your dough is in a 75-80F environment. So many recipes say to proof for X hours at room temp, but they almost never mention that their idea of room temp is pretty warm, usually in the mid-70s. Especially in winter, a lot of us have rooms in the high 60s to maybe 72 and that difference can affect proof times by quite a lot.
Since then I have gotten shallower and shallower on my scoring. Now I normally just use a decorative score, but since today was bread day, I decided to score about 1/4" deep. Edit to add that these are from the same recipe.
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