I’m novice bread maker/baker. I’ve made about 6-8 loaves of basic no-knead and no-knead sourdough. Bread tastes great but my bread is NOT:
Light, full of nice air holes. It always seems too dense
My crusts are always way too hard, crusty. Maybe crust would be fine, but maybe just to thick which makes crust almost unenjoyable. Crust Bottom and sides of bread tend to be issue, top crust pretty good. But again, bread seems too dense, looking for something a bit more “airy”
I’ve been baking in one of:
Pampered Chef STONEWARE LOAF PAN
Pottery Bread Baker
I have pre-heated baking vessel, I have even tried lining with parchment paper.
“A picture paints a thousand words” and a recipe including method also helps.
1: Dense might be under fermented.
2: But then again a very thick unappetising crust could indicate over fermented.
3: Issue could be in the baking itself. The crust forms too quickly preventing oven spring so it’s more dense and could explain the crust too.
How do I determine over-fermented, under-fermented?
Baking may be issue, how can I slow down crust formation? It seems heating baking vessel would speed crust formation
Repeating what Abe said … method and maybe flours and flour/water ratio (hydration), oven temp, bake times.
But … generally, more hydration and correct … maybe longer fermentation (bulk, first rise) helped me when my loaves were good, but dense.
Also, if I understand your baking vessels, they are open bread pans. If you have a cast iron dutch oven or can invert 1 pan over the other to make a covered baker, you might help your crust. Photo of what I’ve done at the end.
And with a covered baker, if you go longer covered and a short time uncovered you will hopefully get a crisp, but not too thick crust which is what I go for. In my conditions, I preheat oven and covered baker to 500, bake covered (on parchment) for 10 min, lower heat to 450-475 depending on flours for 20 min still covered, uncover for 5-10 minutes.
Also, if your heating element is on the oven bottom, you can put a cookie sheet or baking stone on a rack below the rack you bake on. This helps shield the bottom crust from getting to brown and hard.
I see your additional posts while I was hunting the above photos. I confess that it is difficult to see that the crust is hard and thick, compared to typical artisanal loaves so you might not be happy with covered baker.
Top of my bread (as far as crust) has been very good. I’ve baked in stoneware Loaf Pan, covering top with two layers of foil then removing only for last 5 mins or less. Bottom and side are where crust is thick, hard. I like crusty too, but crust is seems too thick. If it crust was less thick would probably be fine.
I have baked at 475 for 45-50 mins
Thanks for ideas
That looks under-proofed to me too. Try proofing the next loaf an hour longer, and see how that works. Then keep pushing each loaf you bake another hour longer until the crumb is more like you are looking for. Beware that it is also possible (and pretty easy) to over-proof as well. If you pay attention to the dough itself as it is proofing (how it looks, how it feels, how it smells), what I call listening to the dough, over time you will get a feel for how long is long enough. Here’s my article about developing that intuition:
As for the crust, try dropping your temperature down some. Unfortunately, oven calibration is frequently all over the place, so 475 in your oven might be pretty different from 475 in my oven, but 475 for 45-50 minutes in my oven would definitely be over-baking. As @anon66425146 suggested, a cookie sheet on a rack below your baking vessel will help with the bottom.
I usually bake 25 minutes at 450 with the lid of my clay baker on and then 35 minutes at 375 with the lid off.
But different people definitely like the crust more or less dense, chewy, etc, and the mode du jour in “artisan” bread baking is definitely on the crusty chewy side of things, so if that’s not what you like, you are going to have to deviate from the instructions you will mostly find.
