Addicted to Holes.
Holes. Big ones, little ones, irregular ones and evenly spaced ones. I’m talking about the holes in bread crumb of course. Newbs call them ‘bubbles’, veteran nerds might say ‘alveoli,’ the much sought after crumbular negative space can become an addiction. It can become the single defining factor of one’s bread making. It’s certainly the number one thing I’m asked about in direct messages on Instagram. Well after “Where can I find your sourdough cookie recipe?” anyway, it’s always “How do I get open crumb?” and “What are you doing that I’m not?” There’s a desperate feel to many of these inquiries, an agitation akin to unfettered obsession. I can acutely name it because I have felt it, I have lived it. I myself am a recovering Hole Addict, if I can adopt unnecessarily provocative nomenclature.
Why are these holes so sought after? Why can that sawing reveal of the first cut-through leave us either elated or disappointed, without even having tasted the bread? My surmise is that consistently achieving open hole crumb is a great measure of the bakers ability to reproduce desired results. It goes beyond the simple “I made this bread, it came out like this,” to “it was humid today and this lot of flour is thirsty, so I did the following things to adjust my process, and it came out like this.” This isn’t meant to demonstrate you need to get all bound up in the esoteric details, only that you need to bake enough bread to be aware of those details, and to know what to do when you encounter them. If the baker is consistently achieving open and airy crumb day after day in varying circumstances with varying ingredients, it’s a sure sign of prowess with dough. So that’s desirable. But here’s the thing: high hydration, open crumb, low percentage whole grain sourdough bread is a very specific and singular type of bread. It’s a common misconception that this type of bread is Old World, that it has been somehow resurrected from a storied past to grace our tables as “real bread.” To quote Nathan Myhrvold of Modernist Bread “...that’s just not factually correct.” No the fact is, this type of bread a lot of us are making has only been definitively around for 40 years or so. It’s also just one type of bread. Shit, Ciabatta has only been around since the 80s. I’m part of the problem, I can admit that. I love peacock-ing and taking pictures of my sourdough bread. I’m part of the reason there is a #crumbshotwanker hashtag. And sure, I make a variety of flavors, but all from very similarly handled dough. As a Hole Addict I’ve painted myself into a corner: in seeking a level of consistency with my dough through constantly obsessing over open crumb, I’m breeding bread mono-culture.
Buzz-kill aside there’s no secret to open crumb sourdough bread, or Country Bread; as so many of us nebulously call it. It’s like anything else that’s worth learning: it takes doing it, and doing it, and doing it again. The same dough. Same flour, hydration, technique, same everything. Each bake is observed, notes taken; and with the formula updated, baked again and again basically ad nauseam. Learn your dough. Not the results; but the making of it. Results are for scrutiny and slathering with butter. Like genetic engineering select for parts of the process that promote open crumb. Keep those. Discard the rest. Do it again. And again. Do it until you know it intimately. Do it until you know what to do when it inevitably strays away from the dough you’ve been working on all this time. Maybe it’s the weather, the lot of flour you’re using; your distracted attitude that day. But the dough reacts, and you react in kind, coaxing it back on track. That’s the conversation. That’s the goal. The point is, it’s not hydration, it’s not bulk fermentation temperature, it’s not how many folds you do. It’s all those things, in balance. There is no silver bullet. You’ve got to talk to your dough. Coax it out. Every time.
This isn’t what you want to hear, I know; so let me give you some ideas to work with; a mantra maybe. There are four key elements to open crumb:
a strong dough
vigorous fermentation
minimal handling
proper proof & bake
By a strong dough, I mean proper gluten development. There are several ways to achieve proper gluten development. You Can Google It. I use a mixer because I’m old and fragile. I also like to compartmentalize my gluten development, to separate it as much as I can from bulk fermentation. You can develop gluten by hand, if you’re able; or you can do it with time, if you have it. A strong dough will ensure that you have a network of microscopic strands of protein that can capture the gas created during fermentation. It’s also worth noting that the higher the percentage whole grain you have in your formula, the less likely you are to achieve an open and airy crumb. The coarseness of whole grain, particularly the bran, physically cuts gluten. This is why most open-crumbed ‘named grain’ loaves are typically comprised of only 20-30% of that titular grain. Setting aside the “which is healthier” debate, a least a modicum of high gluten white roller milled flour in your formula is a key element in achieving any consistency with open crumb. You can rest easy knowing that 99% of the beautifully open crumbed breads you’ve seen on Instagram contain relatively low amounts whole grain. You shouldn’t feel like you’re doing anything wrong here, like I did for too long. Modern roller milled flour is one of the most important culinary achievements of our time. Like any other food, there are good and bad versions of it, and you can eat too much of it; just like cheeseburgers. Don’t feel shame for using white flour in your sourdough bread like I did, it’s silly. 100% Whole grain breads don’t have open crumb. They are a different bread, so we should have a different expectation. It’s not a concession, it’s an opportunity to learn something else.
Ideally you want your gluten fully developed before putting it through a…you guessed it: a vigorous fermentation. Fermentation is the key to it all. If you’re not getting a good heady ferment on your dough, where are the holes/bubbles/alveoli coming from? Also, fermentation further strengthens your dough by breaking out acids that prime the gluten network. The easiest way to ensure a proper ferment is track and manipulate temperatures. Learn the Desired Dough Temperature formula and use it every mix. Track your dough temp during fermentation, moving your dough as needed to warmer or cooler locations as needed to maintain that sweet spot of 75-85 F. There is a ton of great reading on sourdough fermentation out there, you can learn as much about it as you want. At minimum, consider temperature immeasurably important.
If your dough is strong, you can handle it minimally. What I mean by minimal handling is, whenever you handle the dough, you do so with a delicate hand. Do your stretch & folds with intention, don’t smack it around carelessly: stretch it to its limit, and pile it on top of itself. Flip it over. Done. If you have a fully developed and strong dough, keep the folds minimal. You only need to rearrange the dough to give the yeasts access to new food. If your dough is not fully developed, do more folds early on and then let the dough bulk ferment untouched for at least two hours. A fully ‘bulked’ dough will have risen to a significant degree, and look and feel smooth. It should be tacky but not wet. Chad Roberston uses the word “billowy” in his famous book, and I think it’s spot on, if not a touch saccharine. When your vigorous fermentation is through, use a wet scraper to loosen the dough from the container it is in. Gently turn it out onto the work surface. Divide it as few times as possible when portioning it. Shaping minimally is pretty straight forward: close your portioned dough up like a bindle and flip it over. Use your scraper to scoot the dough into a tense ball. Tense. Not tight. After a short rest, flip it your loaf over and close it up, bottom first, then top. Fold the dough the other way, east to west essentially; in half. The idea is to pinch the two ends together without degassing it. It sounds more complicated than it is. At this point you’ve probably successfully trapped a decent amount of gas in your dough, hopefully in an even, lacy matrix.
How you proof and bake your loaves also plays a role in crumb creation. I like to keep it simple: proof it and bake it within an inch of it’s life. You have at this point attained a super super strong, carbon dioxide laden, deflated balloon. You deflated it when you divided it, with shaping, even if only minimally so. It’s time to inflate it. So let it do its thing. Let it rise. Reading proper proof is one of those things that comes with practice and experience. Yay! More baking! The poke test for proofing is a good starting point for knowing when it’s ready, I like to take it there and go another 10 minutes. It’s more superstition than technique. For a retarded proof (and not in August) I give the loaves some floor time before refrigeration: 30 minutes to an hour at room temperature. I’ll often give them more floor time before they go in the oven, but pop them back in the fridge for 20 minutes before the bake so I can get a clean score on them. Your oven should be fired at around 525 F, but once the bread is in, lowered to around 400 F. Bake lean and crusty loaves like these until they are deeply golden brown, and at least 1% black. Carbon has a flavor. In balance with the other flavors of a well made loaf, it’s not to be missed. It’s why we love wood fired pizza, the black & smoky part is next level. Apply it to your bread baking. At the beginning of the bake, steam in your baking chamber is imperative. Steam keeps the surface of your loaf wet, so as it expands it can stretch to it’s maximum potential before the heat of the oven causes it to dry out and crust over. Regardless of how you bake your bread, steam is important. Capturing steam is the true genius of the dutch oven bake: the bread steams itself. The thermal mass of a good dutch oven is a welcome bonus, however. There is some that argue that steam is what creates the much coveted crust blisters. It makes sense: CO2 trapped at the very surface of the dough would be released more rapidly from a wet-surfaced dough, like one baked in steamy environs. I hesitate to agree this is exclusively what causes them however, as I find them one of the more elusive characteristics of a well baked hearth-style loaf. It is my surmise that its probably not just one thing.
To sum up, if you want open crumbed bread, just keep at it. Bake and practice. Something will click for you one day and you’ll wonder what you were doing before. Perhaps more importantly, go easy on yourself. If you’ve read all the way through this you are a card carrying Dough Nerd. You’re halfway there. Bake on!
Check out our recipe for our House Sourdough on our recipes page.