I was watching a video the other day where this one dude was claiming that there was one secret to great oven spring. And while I won’t call the video out specifically just to play nice, I felt that his video was a bit misguided. In it, he claimed that the one secret thing that will give you great oven spring is proper fermentation; specifically, not fermenting too long. He then went on to say that once you mix, you don’t have to do anything like kneading and folding because the fermentation process will develop the gluten.

I will say this: He is not totally wrong. I’ve done 93% hydration whole wheat loaves that required zero folding because the dough was so wet, but did need a long, almost 2-day ferment in the fridge to properly develop the gluten. But the problem I had with what that dude was instructing was that he made it seem as if it was the ONLY thing that’s important in proper oven spring. It’s not. There are several factors that contribute to it in addition to proper fermentation.

To be fair, he did go on to say shaping and steam are also big factors in good oven spring, but the focus of his video was mainly on proper fermentation. Proper fermentation is absolutely critical to good oven spring. But any experienced baker will tell you that there are lots of different factors that contribute to great oven spring beyond proper fermentation such as dough structure development (folding and shaping) and baking environment (steam and a super-hot oven) to name a few. Sure, it starts at proper fermentation, but there’s so much more that will ensure you get good oven spring.

Happy Baking!

Though I haven’t been doing artisan bread making for very long, I’ve come to understand that scoring is a really important step in the process to control the nature of the oven spring. And having a good tool for scoring is super-important. To that effect, I’ve made my own lame and even purchased a gorgeous stainless steel “professional” lame. I’ve been getting better at scoring, but in the back of my mind, I’ve felt the traditional lame is a bit unwieldy.

One of the main issues I’ve had with the traditional lame is that I have a natural tendency to lay the lame down, parallel to the surface of the bread. This causes the side of the blade to catch on the skin of the bread, sometimes tearing it – eek! And though I’m much better at it than I was in the beginning, there have been times where I’ve just ended up removing the razor blade and slashing with the blade. It’s not safe, but I have much more confidence slashing with the blade held closer.

Enter the Wire Monkey Lame.

I first found out about this lame from a couple of Proof Bread videos on YouTube. The owners, Jon and Amanda, made a point of calling out this particular lame, so I checked out the Wire Monkey web site and got the UFO Corbeau. One of the cool things about Wire Monkey lames is that they’re all made from sustainable materials. The Corbeau that I got is made from 100% recycled paper and food-safe resin. I think it’s what’s known as Richlite^TM which is a fantastic material. One of my guitar’s fretboards is made of the material and it feels like ebony! So cool!

The shape of the lame is – in a word – perfect. Its diameter is the same as the length of a razor blade, so when you’re not using it the razor blade tucks right into the lame. It is SO easy to hold and I feel as if I have so much more control over slashing while holding it!

Update 8/1/2020: When I first received the lame the other day, I was right in the middle of a poolish ferment, and didn’t get to use it till this morning because I also did a 16-hour proof on the same dough.

So what’s the verdict? Okay… THIS LAME IS AN ABSOLUTE GAME-CHANGER! I love that I don’t have to worry about my attack angle as with a traditional lame, where I’d often catch the side of the razor blade because I laid the lame too parallel to the dough. With this lame, I feel incredibly confident in scoring my bread! Look at the results:

What an ear! That was scored just this morning with the Corbeau lame! It’s a thing of beauty!

They’re not cheap, starting at $27.95 (I paid $35.95 for mine). But they’re totally worth it! If you’ve struggled with scoring, I can guarantee that you won’t struggle with this lame!

For more information go to the Wire Monkey website. They’ve got some really cool designs!

Wire Monkey lames are the original, made in the USA lames. There are lots of cheaper alternatives that do the same thing. And though I’m not one of those “Buy Only American” types of folks, I do want to support artisans where I can and not the companies that rip off designs.

Years ago, I got some swag from our water company, among which was a flexible plastic scraper (shown above). I laugh every time I use it because of the “Prevent Sewage Backups” tagline. But irrespective of what’s written on the scraper, I use all the time, and not just for bread.

When I started making artisan bread, I was buying what I researched to be the essentials: A digitial scale, a baker’s lame, a few different kinds of loaf pans, etc., etc.. But when it came to a scraper, I put off getting a metal bench scraper because I could do practically everything with my handy-dandy, flexible plastic scraper! It’s SO useful that I’ve even used it to repair drywall!

The fact that it’s flexible is why I love it so. I can bend it to fit pretty much any bowl curvature; something rigid scrapers just can’t do. And though there’s a nifty, small scraper at Bed Bath and Beyond, I’ve seen it, and it just seems a bit too small for my tastes. But whatever, a great plastic scraper is an invaluable tool for working with dough.

As for metal bench scrapers, I have two of them: one 6″ scraper/chopper and a 12″ that I use for tensioning longer loaves (it works great).

So I was watching this LONG video by Proof Bread on YouTube a few days ago. It’s over an hour long and when I saw the length of the video, I thought to myself, I’ll never last… But I’ll be damned if I didn’t watch it from start to finish and even skipped back to certain sections to help me understand his technique better.

In one segment, Jonathan Przybyl, the baker, said something to the effect of, “People seem to think that sourdough is a taste. It’s not. Sourdough is a technique.” I wish I could remember exactly in the video where he said it, but no matter. That phrase struck a real chord with me. It really helped me affirm my own approach to bread making, and helped resolve something with which I’ve struggled since I started making bread seriously: What really is sourdough?

To me, sourdough has been less about a particular taste and more about the craftsmanship in producing an artisan loaf from flour, water, salt, and a leavening agent. I had tasted lots of bread made from “sourdough” starter that, though it certainly had an earthy, fermented taste, it wasn’t all that sour. I struggled with this whole concept of sourdough because there just seemed to be a disconnect between the ingredients and the finished product. So when I heard Jonathan say that “Sourdough is a technique,” I felt I was on the right track with my thinking.

For those that know me, they also know that I haven’t made any sourdough yet; at least in the present. I actually used to make a whole wheat sourdough from an old starter that I got from the TA in my Microbiology class at UC Davis. I had it for years. But at the time, I was just a casual baker. But now that I’ve become serious about the craft, I’m taking my time getting to making bread from a sourdough starter.

It’s not that I don’t use a starter at all. In fact, I regularly make bread with a poolish or biga. In fact, I have a poolish that’s bubbling away right now, getting ready for baking tomorrow morning. For me, this whole artisan bread thing is all about mastering the manipulation of dough. I’m experimenting – a lot – finding the right combination of flours, learning how to properly shape. I’m trying to get a feel for the dough and also how it should look as I knead or fold it. To me, that’s the craft.

But also, there’s a lot of skill in maintaining a starter. I’m getting there. But I’m not there yet.

After my epic fail this past Saturday, I knew that I had to make up for it. But though those loaves definitely turned out wonky, they still tasted really good, and the family didn’t complain, though they did have a good laugh about my mutant bread (shown below).

But as I shared in my previous post, I did understand what I had done wrong. So given that, I had to put those lessons to the test.

First of all, I made absolutely sure my baking stone was set to go, and I pre-heated it for well over an hour before I baked. I also made sure that my loaves were completely proofed before I even considered baking them.

For my baguettes, I used a different shaping technique than what I have been using because I felt that the original technique I learned didn’t create enough tension on the surface. So I watched this video featuring master baker Scott Megee from The Artisan Crust channel:

I tell you what! That technique is the S%&T! I love the stitching technique that Scott uses. I did that and it I felt that it really gave me a more even distribution of the dough through the loaf.

Pre-shaping is so important! So is the bench rest immediately after the pre-shape. I also realized that I didn’t bench rest either loaf for very long on Saturday’s fail. But this time I took a good 20 minutes to let the dough settle down before I did the final shape. That combined with the new shaping technique made both loaves come out perfect!

As for the boule, I couldn’t be happier. I was a little concerned at the start of the bake because I kind of misjudged placing the dough on my stone and I had to pull it out, then reposition and all that movement kind of collapsed the loaf. But luckily it didn’t affect the oven spring.

I feel redeemed! Both the baguettes and the boule fit my archetype of artisan bread. The crust on both kinds are crackly with good ears; especially on the baguettes!

Bread making to me is very much like playing golf. I could be playing like crap and getting super-angry while I duff or skull or hook or slice. Then I hit a perfect shot. The club strikes the ball right in the middle of the sweet spot. I feel no resistance or impact and the ball shoots off like a rocket, landing smack dab in the middle of the fairway. And with that one shot, all my anxiety and frustration just goes away. It’s redeeming!

While I’ve had some wonderful successes in my journey of artisan bread making, I’ve also had some massive fails. I want to be transparent because especially when I first started baking bread, though they tasted great, I wouldn’t exactly call them ideal. Luckily for me though, I haven’t produced any bricks or inedible loaves. But I have a certain aesthetic of what my bread should look and taste like. And to be completely honest, I’ve only reached that ideal a few times.

Most have come pretty close to my ideal, and I’ve been relatively happy with the results. But some, like the loaves shown in the pictures above, have come out looking like mutant spores from another planet! I baked them just yesterday (at the time of this writing) to try out my new Fibrament-D baking stone. From what I can tell, a few things went wrong.

First, based on the cross-sectional cut, it appears that my baking stone wasn’t hot enough. I can tell that because the bottom half of the loaf has a much tighter crumb than the top. This means that the ambient temperature was much higher than the stone and it made the loaves spring much more on top. The dark almost burned top also indicates that there was a huge differential in heat between the ambient air and the stone. So next time, I will spend more time heating the stone.

Second, I used convection baking as opposed to heating from the bottom. This circulates the air evenly through the oven. But I think if I used just normal baking, the heat would’ve radiated from underneath the stone (there’s about 1″ of clearance on either side of the stone). That probably would have helped control the ambient temperature and relied more on the stone as the main heat conductor.

Finally, based on how both loaves exploded, I think my loaves were under-proofed. The fact that they exploded in such an uneven way is a sure sign that the loaves were under-proofed and the yeast had way too much energy left. So I need to let them proof for a bit longer. But I have to admit that it’s still tough for me to tell when the loaves are fully proofed because with the wildly varying temperature of my kitchen, I have to constantly monitor the loaves.

In light of that, I recently purchased a mini-fridge at an auction that I’m using as a dough retarder. I’ve baked a few loaves thus far using a long, overnight ferment, and the results have been promising. Chilled dough is also MUCH easier to score!

Just this one fail has taught me so many new things and it is really helping me appreciate everything that goes into the whole artisan bread-making process!

At the end of my Afternoon Batard recipe, I added a section on using whole wheat flour. I didn’t write it just to satisfy readers’ curiosity. For health and dietary reasons – and to be completely transparent, a strong suggestion from my doctor – I have had to start using whole wheat flour in my bread – at least 50% of my flour is whole wheat flour.

I have to admit that it has been a rather frustrating experience making the transition to whole wheat flour. Up to this point, I’ve invested hours – almost daily – in becoming proficient in making bread with white bread flour. And then having to make an abrupt turn; well, it wasn’t smooth and I really felt like I was going all the way back to square one. The transition is akin to a painter who has mastered watercolor moving to acrylic or oil painting. The basic principles of color and shading are similar, but the change in medium forces adjustments to the technique.

Luckily for me, bread making has become a bit of an obsession so I wasn’t going to be deterred from this setback. Also, just within a few tries of making a few different types of loaves, I started to get a feel for it. Here’s what I’ve learned thus far (and mind you I’m still learning but these things have gotten my bread back “normal”):

The grind of the wheat flour – no matter what kind you use – is critical. I started out using course-ground wheat flour. It tasted okay, but the texture was way too gritty, and the crumb was really, really closed, even if I used a 90%+ hydration and used a gluten helper such as vital wheat gluten or psyllium fiber. Fine or extra-fine grind is the best.

As for the type of wheat flour, I absolutely love working with white whole wheat flour. It tastes much sweeter than red whole wheat. I’ve only made one batch using this flour, but I’m hooked! The taste and texture of the bread instantly hooked me! The loaves I just made used absolutely zero added sugar (which many whole wheat recipes include). The white whole wheat has a sweetness to it that doesn’t need fortification.

With any wheat flour dough, everything takes longer or you do things more. You have to do the initial knead longer. The amount of folding doubles at the very least (this first batch, I folded it 6 times before I got the right tension in the dough). Fermentation takes longer as well – at least a 3-4 hour bulk at room temperature, though I got better results with a slow, overnight fermentation (I baked half my dough the first day, then baked the second loaf the next morning).

I found that even more so than with white flour, shaping a loaf and creating surface tension with whole wheat dough is even more critical. Furthermore, final proofing takes quite a bit longer. Even with my early attempts, I didn’t proof my loaves long enough and they sprung up way too fast! You want oven spring, but you want it to be slow and gradual.

For instance, this morning, I shaped and proofed my second loaf fresh out of the refrigerator. When I’ve done a slow ferment with white bread, after an hour and half, the dough would be ready. But with this whole wheat loaf? After an hour and a half, it still needs another half hour to proof – at least (I’m proofing it while I write this). Even my loaf yesterday (shown above) – I barely proofed it enough. After it was finished baking, I realized I probably should’ve proofed it longer.

So as I said in my afternoon batard recipe, going to whole wheat makes the process at the very least, an all day affair. But to be realistic, it’s better as a two-day affair. Mind you, those days don’t have to be consecutive. The thing about cold fermentation is that you can let it go for a few days. Given that, my process will be mixing and doing the initial knead the first day, then putting the dough in the fridge for at least 18-24 hours. So I’ll mix in the morning the first day, and when I want to make a loaf, I’ll grab a piece out of the fridge then shape, proof and bake on the next.