The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book_ A Guide to Whole-Grain Breadmaking - Laurel Robertson [142]
Did you grease or oil the bowl in which the dough rose? Some of this fat may not get absorbed; the dough separates at these points and gas accumulates. Using too much dusting flour can cause the same problem and so can letting the dough dry out during the second rise, or while it is resting.
If the holes are only at the top of the slice, while the bottom is pretty dense, and maybe the loaf even collapsed a little, it was overproofed. Did you forget the salt? It is easy to overproof saltless bread. If your oven was not hot enough at the beginning of the bake, the bread will continue to rise when it should be baking.
If all the crumb is open and also moist, the dough was too wet.
Is the crumb crumbly?
Usually, the crumb is crumbly if there was too much flour and too little kneading, but it can also be caused by “overing”: overkneading, overfermenting, overproofing. Too much wheat germ, bran, oat flakes, and such will do it, too.
Is the crumb uneven?
Cold dough proofed warm may have an open texture on the outside and be dense in the center. Warm dough that is cooler in the final rise may be holey in the center and dense near the crust.
Are there streaks or hard spots in the crumb?
You get hard spots when you pick up bits of hard or gummy scrap from the kneading table; the best place for the stuff that rolls off your hands after kneading is the compost bin. Avoid using too much dusting flour.
You also get streaks when the dough is chilled or dries out during the risings. If fermenting dough gets really crusty there will be gummy places in the bread where it couldn’t bake properly.
Flavor & Staling
Is the flavor poor? Does the bread get stale too quickly?
If the bread tastes bland and flat, you probably forgot the salt. Bread that is underfermented will also be a little bland and will stale quickly. Most of the factors that make poor flavor also make for poor keeping quality. Since no one wants to eat the stuff, it can be around a long time, which doesn’t help either.
If the bread tastes yeasty and looks gray, its rising was too long or too warm or both. Or did you use too much yeast? Overbaked bread is dry and hard, and seems stale from day one.
Is the flour old or the oil rancid? Did the butter spend the night alongside a half onion in the refrigerator? Fats, flour, milk, eggs—all of them can absorb off-flavors in storage. Bread made in a short time can never keep as well as leisurely loaves do, even when it is made properly.
Were you experimenting? A new combination of good ingredients doesn’t automatically work well. Some ingredients help bread stay moist and fresh-tasting longer: cooked cereal, stewed or steamed fruit, fat, honey, milk (particularly cultured milk).
Check your storage conditions (see this page).
About the Ingredients:
Flour
COMMERCIAL MILLS & THEIR PRODUCTS
In the old days most towns had a small grain mill where everyone went to buy flour. We still have a mill in our town, and from across the river it probably looks like it did a hundred years ago. But today inside the Great Petaluma Mill are thirty-three Unique Shoppes, including two restaurants and a candy store.
It was after the invention of the roller mill that small local mills gave way to huge, centralized factories. Freshly ground brown flour from home couldn’t compete with the manufactured white flour the new machines produced. With its nearly eternal shelf life and ability to tolerate travel, white flour was not only more glamorous but cheaper and less variable, too.
The modern commercial roller mill is a gigantic affair many stories high. The grain enters on the top and passes through the first, shearing rollers. These break the grains and produce the first powdery-fine flour, which is sieved out through fine cloth. Strong air currents lift off the lightweight bran. What is left is “middlings.” These are again milled and separated several times into many distinct flour “streams.” The first fine powdery flour from the center of the kernel is