>Bakers: Though I've been making bread for twenty years, I have yet to
>figure out why some loaves rise quite a bit as they bake, and some hardly
>at all.
>- Maureen
Maureen,
You are entering an area of contention and mystery when you start trying to
work out what makes a loaf "spring" in the oven.
The best bakers in the world are hard put to it explaining why two,
apparently identical, loaves will expand by different amounts when baked.
Large commercial bread operations can produce bread that "springs" much
more predictably than a home baker's loaves but they have extremely tight
control over the variables that can bedevil amateurs
The general rule of thumb is, the more the loaf is proofed, the less the
expansion in the oven, relative to the volume just before baking. (very
long proofed dough will sometimes show a negative spring) but the final
volume of the loaf after baking and cooling , relative to the UNPROOFED
dough's volume is the important aspect.
It is instructive and even, possibly, interesting, to take a simple dough
(I performed this exercise using Peter Reinhart's Poolish Baguette dough)
and treat it as normal, divide it into, say, 6 loaves, (I made 6
baguettes), weighing the divided dough so that the loaves are as close to
identical as possible, shaping and leaving to proof until the dough is, as
close as you can judge, 1/2 hour away from the state you would normally
consider ready for the oven.
Then put just one loaf in the oven, bake off as normal, and 1/2 hour after
the first one goes in the oven, the temperature will have recovered and the
second loaf can be baked. Keep on baking a single loaf every 1/2 hour until
all 6 are baked. Use the same water/misting/slashing regime for all
bakings. The differences between the finished breads will be marked. Will
this exercise help you to predict oven expansion in the future? I found
that the feeling for volume increase that I gained from the exercise
allowed me to predict oven spring correctly about once in 5 - 6 bakes,
rather than 1 in 10. But only for the particular dough I had used for the
exercise - I suspect you would have to repeat the exercise for all the
breads you bake, a mammoth task for my repertoire.
I would say that trying to predict oven expansion accurately in the home
baker's kitchen is at best, futile, and, at worst, infuriating.
John