under under under - merton bakery

Here’s Jonathan Stevens from The Hungry Ghost Bread Book:

Almost all the bread I come across, in bakeries and in books, is underhydrated, underfermented, and underbaked. Why? Because it’s easier to handle, because blasting steam at an underproofed loaf makes it “pop” in a sexy way, and because people are afraid of pushing the envelope. Don’t be afraid: the worst than can happen (and it will!) is a mess of dough.

Bread in the UK is almost always underbaked and I am sure I’ve tended to underferment dough out of slight nervousness about over-proofing.

On Friday I fermented a bunch of loaves for COGs as follows:

1 hour autolyse (just flour and water) to help develop some strength in the dough
the time between the levain and refrigeration was about 7 hours. This includes bench rest, shaping and some resting before going into the fridge
the dough temperature was more or less 26ºC the entire time
the loaves were refrigerated at 10ºC for about 11 hours. That temperature is critical as it will slow fermentation but not stop it (in a domestic fridge the temperature is normally around 5ºC and this will halt fermentation)
the Merton Simple loaves were hydrated at 73%. Sometimes I’ll go up to 76% but at this time of year the flour doesn’t seem to be able to hold that much hydration without going too slack.

Here’s the inside of a Merton Simple loaf from that fermentation:

simple insides

The first thing to note is that those large holes are not fermentation holes. They are from me not quite getting the shaping tight enough. But otherwise the presence of different sized alveoli throughout the crumb is a sign of good fermentation. Could I push the fermentation further? Absolutely.

Could I push the hydration a bit? For sure. This would speed up fermentation a bit, but also end up with larger alveoli and I’m not sure I want that.

As for underbaking? I continue to push how hot the oven is and how long I can push the baking while keeping customers onside. Tricky.