I can understand why you tried cooking bread in an oven that wasn’t preheated and I can even understand why you would cook a loaf at 350°. But why you would take the loaf out before it was done being cooked I don’t understand. I enjoyed the experiment of seeing which different temperatures you would cook a loaf at. But obviously you would need to cook the low for longer if the temperature was lower. So I prefer to see that kind of experiment where all of the loaves reached 200° in the center and then see how they are compared in the end no matter how long it took them to cook.
I completely agree with you, I have experimented with temps, and they produce somewhat difference results. However ( and I use the same cast iron he does) after about 15 mins, I insert my instant read temp gauge (the one with the heat prob in the oven and read out on the stove. I bake to 200 degrees, regardless of time. If I want it more brown, I hit it for a couple minutes at high temp; another varible is steam, lots of ways to get there. My personal preference on crust is I don't like destroying the roof of my mouth.
This is how I bake Sourdough Dough bread :- Pre-heat oven with Dutch oven in with lid off to 220c, Bake with lid on for 35 to 45min then lower temp to 200c with lid off 8 to 10min, it works for me and Purfect
I don’t agree. Italian bakeries bake delicious , crispy sourdough bread. My local store Mariano’s bakes twice a day and I can buy it hot in open paper bag.
Really depends where you live. I've lived in places where the bread from the supermarket wouldn't be out of place in a Michelin starred restaurant and then I've lived in places where the bread from the supermarket was just something serviceable to throw together a quick sandwich. I've also lived somewhere where nothing in the supermarket could reasonably be considered to be bread, but was instead a particularly low quality cake that was consistently mislabeled as bread.
Totally, the town i grow up in in Algeria, supermarkets didn't sell bread, you buy your bread from a bakery twice a day, so delicious, old brick oven, they also make croissants, chaussons.... Twice a day.
I have found out that 428 degrees is perfect in my oven. Sometimes I lower the oven to 375 degrees when I take the lid off. The higher temperatures tend to burn the bottom of the loaf. Great experiment. Cold Dutch oven in a low temperature oven would have been a nice addition to the lineup.
I will explain to you, in the first bread that was baked when the oven was heated, it became sour because in the first period the low heat increased the activity of the bacteria that produced acids.
That's what I do. Start from say 240 for the first 20 min and then steam off and down to 225/210 for another 20. Finally +-10 minutes at 190 just with the fan on . That's what happens into an old brick oven heated with wood
Good experiment! This shows me the exact temperature is not as critical as the relative temperature. If I like it, really crusty, higher temperature if not so lower temperature. Bottom line after this I’m not so worried about having the right temperature. I guess I’ll experiment
You've just convinced me to bake my bread at a low temperature. I haven't made a lot of bread in my life. Years ago I had a bread machine and used it a couple dozen times, and in the last year I've made a dozen loaves of no-knead bread. But with the latter, the crust is always hard as a rock...take a bite and the rest of the crust comes off with it. Looks nice, but not really usable the way I want to use it. Not a substitute for store-bought sandwich bread. But the low-temperature breads you made looked like they had a crust that was soft enough to make a sandwich out of. So thanks for the info because I will be referring back to it (probably soon)!
If you want a replacement for store bought sandwich bread, then bake a sandwich loaf! That was not at all the type of bread he is baking here. There are loads of RU-vid videos showing how to make soft sandwich loaves. And they are often baked at a lower temperature.
I think the reason why the first 2 ones were more sour than the others was because the relatively short time for those low temperatures didn't allow much of the acid to evaporate
In these times when people are worried about power usage it is good to know that high quality bread can be cooked at lower temperatures. Additionally many people have ovens that don't do high temperatures so this means they too can cook a good loaf.
Hi, learning alot from channel. Thanks for sharing your great knowledge. My question is, you said normal bread is baked at 45 minutes and you also mentioned regular bread. What is the difference between these two. And what exact time will a bread say more than 2 be baked in an oven? Will appreciate your kind response. Thank you.
Interesting experiment, but the first loaf was the only one that started in a cold oven and therefore had two variables changed. I’d love to see a test between a cold oven start and an oven turn-off method, where the highest temp for both was the same! That’s the one where you turn it off for ten minutes and then turn it back on. I’ve heard people claim both cause great oven spring and both save energy.
I don't know why people are so excited about Dutch ovens. I bake my sourdough on a slab of steel for 22 minutes and get what you get in the cast iron can in 45 at 450F.
I love these tests! I think you're the only one making bread science accessible like this. Would love to see a video comparing breads baked at different levels of starter activation (fed once a week, fed daily, fed every 12 hours, used at peak rise, used after peak). It would settle a debate my partner and I have been having 😂😅
Why do you bake in a cast iron pot in your modern fan-assisted oven? This prevents air circulation around the dough and it takes a long time to bake the bread! I bake bread in my fan-assisted oven on thin flat trays at 200 degree Celsius for 25 to 30 minutes.
250C looks best to me with best oven spring. I start the bake at 260C and get good oven spring. I tried 275C but it made the bread too dark and oven spring was no better than the 260C. You can start at 260C and then bake for 20minutes. Take off the lid and bake for another 25 minutes . You can lower the temp now if you want to not get it too dark but otherwise observe through the glass the colour you like. Some ovens can't reach 260C or about 500F so do whatever you can get to. Turn on the grill as well to get to hih temp and switch it off just before you bake.
I've been playing with thermal regimes but starting out at a lower temperature and turning the oven up. I don't use a dutch oven. The start at a lower temperature, I think, allows for more expansion as the crust doesn't harden off so quickly as it will at a higher temperature. I've tried 250F 350F the 250F seems to produce more oven rise. There is a female youtube ( Evelyn something) who starts in a cold oven.
I live in the mountains at 6,000 ft. elevation. I am having a very hard time controlling rising and over proofing. I am so envious of your proofed loaves' sturdy structure when you score them. When I score mine, they collapse like a popped balloon.They come out of the oven flat. I am trying to figure out how to slow the fermentation down and still get a full rise. Beautiful loaves you made... all of them!
Don't have any tips for the mountains, but he's leaving them in the fridge first, which makes them much easier to score. Try chilling the dough first? :)
i live at 4,600 ft. elevation, so not so high as yours, but still high and I know friends that bake at the same elevation as yours. We have not the problems you are talking about so probably the elevation is not the reason of the issue you are having. as others have already told to score the bread when is cold from the fridge helps, but is possible to do it even with a room temperature dough without having it collapsing. Maybe the too acid starter is the problem, I don't have enough experience about it, but there can be other causes like a too weak gluten structure due to too little kneading and/or folds or too much hydration for the flour you are using or maybe as you guess is just over proofing so you should shorten your proofing time or use less starter. Baking is complex, many factors contribute to the perfect result, so to help from distance is not easy. I suggest you to find yourself the origin of your problem by changing only a factor each time, so i.e. try to lower the hydration or to reduce the proofing time, but only one of the 2 and see if it makes a difference, only changing a single factor each time you have real control on the result of the test. I hope it helps, ciao from the Italian mountains.
I had to change my recipe. when I lived at 1 mile high elevation my recipe worked great. Now I am at sea level elevation.....I Had to change the recipe. 900 gas organic 13% protein bread flour, white 620 grams of water (sometimes I have to lessen that to 610) 200 grams of starter 12 grams of quality salt (Himalayan) Try this one and have fun
I haven't been to your webpage yet, but I always wondered about baking temperatures . I'm currently trying to learn how to make Cuban bread. I grew up in Miami Florida, and the Cuban bread they make there is amazing. I'm going to check out your webpage, to see if you might have tried making Cuban bread. Thanks for posting this video...
I grew up near Tampa - same struggle! I’ve made it a couple times. Biggest problem is getting the same flour they use (not available in supermarkets), and you must use pork fat for shortening. It’s pretty good when you can’t get anything within 500 miles! 👍
2nd one wins, imo. I hate the last 2 crusts. They'd be cut off in my home. What happens when you preheat the oven, but not the dutch oven cooking vessel? Would it be somewhere between the first 2 loaves?
Great channel for sourdough bread. I've made 8 or so loaves so far and they've all been pretty flat. My starter is quite lively if anyone is wondering.
like the first comment I had to change my recipe. And I refresh my starter more often by discarding and feeding it for 3 days. changing my recipe really helped
I thought that you would have preheated the oven to 180C at the beginning as baking from cold is not the same. All the other loaves were put into a hot oven and that is why it didn't look baked. I baked my last bread at 180 preheated and it came out great, like your third loaf.
In a future video, you could use a remote meat thermometer such as IKEA Fantast to bake all to the same internal temperature (200°F?), and compare oven temps and baking times. I bake my 1.8 Kg of dough for 1 hour @ 475°F with the lid on the entire time, but I live at 1600m elevation.
I made a loaf of bread baked in an enaleled iron pot with a lid, baked at 450 degrees for 45 mminutes, and with the lid off for 10 minutes more. Turmed out fantastic and very happy. Problem is, the bottom crust was perfect, but my new bread serrated knife could hardly cut through the crust. If I struggled more with the knife, I could've hurt myself. I baked the bread by carrying the dough into the pot with parchment paper. The crust was perfect, the insides were soft, chewy, big and small eyes, but the crust was like rock hard. Can yhis be corrected in future loaves?
That happened to me sometimes and I had to rock a chefs knife to get through the bottom cruse. It happens way less when I changed to cooking at 450f for the first 20 minutes, then remove the lid and turn oven down to 370 for the last 25 minutes. I have no idea if this change was the cure or I subconsciously changed something else and I didn't notice. Worth a shot IMO. By the way I also use parchment paper.
@@cgirl111 I put the baked bread in a plastic store bought bread bag, and after one night in this bag, the crust softened up well enough so the bottom crust was no longer rock hard. Save a couple of your old bread bags for storageof home baked bread.
I was an exchange student to Argentina and discovered really good bread (of course, great everything else, too, but), I've been trying to duplicate that ever since returning home. I took my mom back for a visit and it's all turned into the crap we have here in the States now so I'm baking a couple times a week now. I'm still scratching my head, but oh well. Stuff happens!
Enjoyed the video but I think it was off to start the first loaf in a cold oven while the others were in preheated ovens. Why didn't you start with the oven and pan at temp (356f) so that all would be equal. I'm certainly no baker but I think the rise would be quite different everything was at temp.
How would I adjust my temperature and time, using convection oven with steam mode. Not using dutch oven. My dough size about 550 g with hydration 70 to 73%. Do i bake longer or higher temperature for higher hydration? Thanks.
This would've been a far more useful experiment if you had cooked them to the same internal temperature instead of focusing on the baking time. I'd like to see how the different temperatures affect the bread when baked to the correct internal temperature, and then to know how long each bread takes to bake to the correct temperature in the different temperatures of the oven. I personally think that would've been more useful information.
We were taught to always choose the best cooked loaf, ie, the almost burnt one versus the pretty blonde one. That advice has never failed me ìn choosing the tastiest "artisan" loaf. Plus... undercooked bread is much harder to digest... so "overcooked" bread is always our choice.😂
No, it doesn't make the bread better quality. Only makes the crust harder and darker. While many people like that.... many people don't like that, so it's fine if you do that or don't do that. The bread is cooked through either way.
Ramon, could you please refrain from squeezing the crusty bread? It's after 10pm here, I'm in bed and you're only making me (and everyone else) super hungry. It's not good for the waistline. Thanks. 😊
Well they all look good. But the time there's a different. The first two you cooked at 20 minutes the second time. And the second 2 at 25 . Like said the 4th may be maybe 5 minutes too much . The first loaf 5 minutes more. But they all look good. Maybe next time you can send them to me and I'll be nicer 😉
This video left something to be desired...that is time-temperature relations. Sure higher temp can give you crusty skin quicker, but not to the point of burnt taste. Less crusty ones at lower temp will get there if allowed to bake a little longer. so there.
Having watched the first 10 minutes of your video post and sitting in utter amazement, can I ask you to do another experiment baking Sourdough in the Shower as against the Bath.....I think it will offer your audience something extra and more worthwhile.
in order for the experiment to teach us somthing it would have been better to choose diffrent constant than time bcause as already mention no one in his right mid would think to take the bread out beforo it got the right colors. rather then just choosing arbituarary constant like time i would devide my usual timing with and with out lead by the tempruture and use it a a multiplier for the new temprtaure to get an estimated timing in the oven. and than i would choose a constent of weghit reduction of temprature.
You were very unfair with the first loaf. May be if we calculate the warm up time and integrate the amount of heat it could be a fair cook and a fair comparison. May be a way of saving energy and get good loafs too. The same applies to reheating the Dutch oven when cooking consecutive loafs.
@@philipvanderwaal6817 Directly under the video, in the lighter grey box. Where it says, "the great bread challenge, which temperature...." click there. All youtube videos have a description there.
Mr Morgan attributed this as a scientific video, not baking magic, so I watched the whole video, and was happy I did. Thanks for not attributing the process to magic. Christ is life.
I've found the best way is to crank my oven up to max at 250 C and when it reaches that temperature cook my bread in a Dutch Oven. After 20 minutes I take the lid off the Dutch Oven and turn the oven down reducing the temperature to 200 c and cook for a further 20 minutes. I find that get me the best of both worlds.
