Testing Slashes

I made up a batch of motherdough sour using 30% motherdough(prefermented dough at 80% hydration) this time. I like the flavor of the motherdough breads and I wanted to do a little bit of experimenting with slashing. The dough did well and I shaped it and proofed it fine. Then with the first loaf, I slashed deeply at more of a 45 degree angle. The loaf turned out like this:

loaf # 1

The second loaf was slashed very shallow at about a 30 degree angle and turned out like this:

loaf # 2

You can see the shallow slashes tore apart when the dough expanded. I also was having trouble with the heat not being high enough  because the more motherdough you use, the   higher temperature you seem to need. The long fermented doughs seem to like a higher temperature to brown because the dough has depleted more of its sugars. So I turned the oven up to 500 degrees and let the oven warm up more and then I popped in this loaf:

loaf # 3

This loaf was slashed at a medium depth with a 30 degree angle. By medium I mean about 1/2″ deep more or less. The dough liked the higher heat as well as the medium slashing depth and turned out a nice loaf.

Here are all three loaves:

Three loaves

Here is the crumb of the third baked loaf:

crumb

The bread, as usual with the motherdough style of sourdough, was fragrant and full flavored. I am thinking of doing a Pane Teresa batch soon as I would like to see some LARGE holes! I have been working with some finer grained bread and once in a while you just want some large chewy holey bread! So it should be coming soon.

northwestsourdough

Teresa L Greenway - Sourdough bread baker, author, teacher, entrepreneur. Join my baking classes at: https://tinyurl.com/nbe3ejd

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