That creates an airtight environment. Take your biggest casserole pot, get it hot in the oven, then put your shaped dough in there. It can be quite tricky to get in there, so I shape my dough on a loose bottomed tart tin lined with paper then lower it into the pot using string.
Slashing the loaf horizontally or diagonally cuts through the surface and will encourage it to grow in a certain direction. Six steps to brilliant bread Our top bread recipes How to make bread video Bread basics and beyond How to buy bread the French way.
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If you want to use a low protein flour but still get a decent rise, make sure that you combine it with a bread flour so you can still get a good crumb. You want your dough to feel soft and slightly sticky after mixing. Once all your ingredients are mixed well, tip your dough out onto an unfloured surface and knead well until the dough pulls away from the surface without leaving any residue and passes the windowpane test. I remember making plenty of flat loaves before I realized that I needed to shape my dough in a certain way for it to rise in the oven.
With a lot of bread, you need to knock the gas out of the dough after its first prove and reshape it appropriately for its second prove before baking it. Either try the tap test or take its internal temperature. Pull your bread out of the oven and give it a few firm taps on the bottom.
It should sound hollow and almost have an echo to it. Everyone has a different oven and environment, so the time that you have to cook your bread is likely slightly different from that in the recipe. The type of oven you use may be different too. Some people like baking in fan ovens whilst most bake in non-fan ovens.
The temperature a bread cooks at is different for many different types of bread. Some need extremely high temperatures to cook whilst others cook at a more comfortable temperature for longer. The dough can become airy and fluffy only when it has had enough time to rise. The final proof of the bread is especially important; it is recommended to use a proofing basket for the final rise for a beautifully developed dough. Typically, dough rises twice for perfect bread, but you can even rise your bread 3 times or more.
Neither under-proofed nor over-proofed dough is light and airy. To check if your dough has risen to the right degree and can go into the oven, do the poke test.
Poke the dough with your finger and watch what happens. If the dough comes back to its initial shape quickly, it needs more time to rise. If it recovers slowly, then your bread is well-proofed and ready to go into the oven. For the bread to come out soft and fluffy, you need to make sure that the yeast ferments properly. It is not only the temperature of your kitchen that affects the activation of the yeast. You also need to add the yeast to warm water to get it working.
Aside from the temperature of the water, you need to pay attention to the date on the yeast packaging. If the yeast is expired and not active, no matter what you add it into, you can never get a fluffy loaf of bread. Scoring seems to be the easiest step in the bread baking process — all you need to do is make a few cuts on the bread before baking it. But the truth is, there is more to scoring than you think. If you score the bread too deeply or get carried away and make too many cuts on it, the dough will lose the gas collected in it.
Thus, you will end up with dense and heavy bread. To make the bread fluffy, score it as soon as the proofing process is over. Make a few cuts into the top layer of the dough and put it quickly into the oven. Doing this will prevent the dough from exploding in the oven and releasing all the gases collected in it.
When your freshly baked bread is finally out of the oven, you may be tempted to cut it immediately and give it a try. But you need to let the bread cool before you cut it. Moreover, you need to cool it properly to avoid dense and chewy bread. Once you take the bread out of the oven, let it cool without covering it with a towel.
As the bread cools, excess moisture escapes from it, resulting in soft and fluffy bread. By covering the bread with a towel while it cools, you trap the moisture inside. This makes the bread dense and heavy. Cooling the bread right is the only thing you can do to improve the texture of your bread after you have baked it. If your bread has a sour, yeasty flavour and smells of alcohol then you have either used too much yeast. If your bread stales quickly and is crumbly then you may have used too much yeast, the flour may not have the correct protein content or the length of time that you left the dough to prove for was either too long or too short.
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