Loaf Troubleshooting - Two Ways To Screw Up The Shape (2024)

FAQs

Why is my bread not holding shape? ›

Either your dough is over hydrated, under-strengthened, or over-proofed. In most cases, it is either over-hydrated or under-strengthened. Hold back some of the mixing water next time if you feel the dough is very wet and hard to handle at the end of mixing.

If the loaf has a flat top then you may have used flour which is too weak. Always use strong bread making flour. Other potential reasons for this problem could be that too little salt was used, the dough was too wet or that the dough was poorly shaped.

Some ovens run hotter than its settings, some cooler. If the oven is too hot the loaf will be brown and crispy on the outside but doughy in the middle and may collapse as it cools. When bread is baked at too low a temperature it will not rise enough in the oven resulting in a dense and sunken loaf.

A “tight crumb” aka small holes in the interior of your bread can be the result of different factors: under-fermenting, over-fermenting, and a lack of gluten development. The most confounding part of sourdough bread baking is that the rise times of recipes are just a suggestion or range.

The yeast can then repeat the same process during the second rise and create more gas to be trapped in the dough. Because the yeast has already exhausted some of the dough's food supply, it won't be as energetic and will create much smaller air bubbles.

Feel: Bread dough that has successfully risen/proofed will spring back slowly when poked and leave an indent. If it snaps back too quickly, it needs more time.

The Rubaud method is a popular method of hand mixing the dough. The Rubaud method develops gluten strength up front in the process. In the Rubuaud method, you gently lift and pull the dough in a bowl, mimicking the motion of a diving-arm mixer (or perhaps the diving arm-mixer is mimicking the Rubaud method!)

Once the gluten network has formed, over handling the dough can cause this network to break down. You really only need to handle sourdough minimally. Each set of stretch and folds should consist of 4 stretches and folds. You should aim to do around 4 to 6 sets, but you may need less depending on the dough strength.

Note: As loaves begin to overproof they lose their height and shape. The crumb becomes more dense. The holes become more ragged and irregular in shape. The crust begins to thin and separate from the crumb.

If dough hydration is too high, the dough will be too slack to hold its shape. Try adding a little more flour or a little less liquid to the dough.

Why is my bread misshapen? ›

This usually happens when there is not enough liquid in the bread mixture. If the dough is too stiff it will not rise evenly, resulting into a lopsided loaf. To get better results, please add an extra 10-20 ml of water to the mixture (on top of the quantity recommended by the recipe book).

The depths of scoring

As you can see in the video, the loaf that wasn't scored suffered from multiple blowouts; a blowout happens when the steam has no place to escape. Steam will always find the weakest point in the dough in order to escape.

99% of the time this happens, the problem lies with the yeast used. The quality might be compromised, or you might have applied it incorrectly, or under poor cooking conditions.

Scoring the exterior of proofed loaves before baking greatly affects the internal and external aspects of our bread. A well-placed score with proper depth enables bread to spring fully at the beginning of baking, producing an open interior structure in the process.

The dough was either too wet or too dry, The slashing of the dough wasn't sufficient or you didn't do it, Under proofing, Shaping and the skin tension.