#Dutch crunch bread losing weight skin#

Steaming is often introduce to sourdough bread to control the timing at which the crust is formed.Īs more steam is used, the formation of the crust is delayed as steam lowers the surface temperature of the dough, resulting in a thin crust. If you would like to learn more, read Proper Cooling To Get The Cleanest Cuts On Sourdough Bread 4. I have written a comprehensive guide on cooling sourdough bread which explains how all these factors affect cooling times. Proper cooling times is dependent on the size of the loaf, shape of the loaf, the room temperature and the type of flour used. Premature cooling causes a dry and hard crust with compromised flavor. It is best to allow sourdough bread to cool for at least 4 hours at room temperature for the moisture to fully settle and flavor to fully develop. When we do not cool the bread sufficiently before slicing, not enough time has passed for the moisture to be absorbed by the crust, causing the crust to remain dry and hard. Sufficient cooling time allows some of these moisture to dissipate out of the starch molecule in the crumb of the bread, which will then be absorbed by the dry crust, softening it. Typical duration of bake ranges from 25 – 45 minutes at 232 Celcius a higher hydration dough requires a longer bake time and a heavier loaf also calls for a longer bake time.Īs the hot loaf leaves the oven, a lot of its moisture is trapped in starch molecules of the bread’s crumb.If you are baking at a lower temperature, over a longer duration, the surface of the dough losses a great amount of moisture without burning, leading to a thick and dry crust that feels very hard. If you are baking at a very high temperature over a long duration, the crust will burn. The higher the temperature of the bake, the quicker the moisture is loss to evaporation. The longer you bake, overall loss of moisture becomes greater.

The higher surface area of long skinny loaves results in a greater loss of moisture to evaporation. Long skinny loaves such as baguettes have higher surface area which loses a higher amount of moisture than the same dough weight shaped into a round loaf.Therefore larger shaped dough losses less moisture to evaporation. A larger dough has more surface area than a smaller dough, but a larger dough also has a much greater internal volume. Smaller dough pieces tend to lose a higher proportion of their initial moisture weight due to a higher surface area to volume ratio.Here are some of the factors that affects the moisture loss during baking: The more moisture is loss during baking, the drier the crust becomes which contributes to a harder crust texture The rate at which moisture is lost in the oven plays a big role in the dryness of the crust.

#Dutch crunch bread losing weight skin#

When baked the thin skin sets and hardens into a crispy crust.

If gluten is developed to the highest degree, there are many layers in the dough that is able to trap carbon dioxide gasses, and when the dough rises, the area under the skin of the dough is less dense and filled with air holes. When baked, this dense dough sets and hardens into a dense, thick and hard crust. When gluten is developed only minimally, there are less layers in the dough where carbon dioxide gasses are trapped, and as such the dough is dense under its skin. Mixing aligns the glutenin and gliadin proteins in your flour to form gluten networks which functions to trap carbon dioxide gasses from the fermentation, which enables the loaf to gain volume and rise. What makes crust hard (excessively dry and thick) 1. There are many factors in the baking process that can cause a dry and thick crust, resulting in the undesirable hardness we will explore what these factors are so that you can avoid them in your bake. The crust of the sourdough bread takes on an unpleasant hard rock-like texture when it is excessively dry and thick a dry but thin crust on the other hand produces a pleasant crispy crust.