5 Tips for Perfect Sourdough Ear

Hey what's up! I'm gonna give you five tips to get a nice ear like this on your loaf of sourdough bread. Let's get into it shall we? First of all obviously for any kind of sourdough recipe you need an active sourdough starter. I have some recipes on my channel you can go and check it out later. Make sure to feed your starter a couple of times before making the recipe. Let's make a Lower the hydration to get more oven spray. True story my friend. My go-to hydration level is something around 73 to 75 percent. I'm using bread strong flour and a little bit of rye to boost up the fermentation. In this case for 350 gram flour I have only 240 grams water. Mixy mixy clean up your hand and the bowl. Let the time to do the rest of the job. 30 minutes later time to give this bad boy a series of folds. But if you have noticed it's already stronger. That's the magic of time. Bring the dough on the surface. I want to have full control. By the way this is the proper way to do the snap and fold. Gluten development no shortcut my friend. Use whatever technique you know to make a strong gluten structure. After few slap and fold I'm gonna round the dough up with the help of the surface. This dough not gonna bother you at all. But as a beginner baker the situation for you might be completely different. I want you to reduce the hydration according to your own recipe. If you have a stand mixer feel free to use it. Everything would be much more easier. Mix the dough until you have a pumpkin shape like this. Check the windowpane test and you are good to go. More strong dough more oven spring. As simple as this. One hour later again I'm gonna bring the dough at the surface because it's lamination time. Simply spread the dough as much as it possible without tearing it of course. And then grab each side stretch a little bit fold it to the center and the other sides overlapping each other as well. Then I'm gonna get fancy flip the dough and round it up one more time with the help of the surface to even create little more tension. Like so I have a very strong dough something like this smooth and elastic easy to handle not sticky at all. Gorgeous. Into the bowl cover it up and this time let it rest for one hour. My room temperature is around 26 degrees celsius today. A beautiful fermentation going on here. You see some bubbles forming on the surface of the dough. To make sure everything is set I'm gonna give this a gentle set of coil fold and that's it. Let's talk about expectation because for example breads with lots of inclusion not gonna give you the same huge oven spring. Like cranberry and walnuts or jalapeno and cheddar cheese. Don't expect to get the same result with different kind of flour. Of course nothing wrong with this beautiful whole wheat loaves. My point is with higher hydration and different flour like 50 percent whole wheat in this case you're not gonna get that huge ear. That's it. Which totally fine. Back to the dough after two hours at 26 degrees celsius. Already finished its ball fermentation you have this dome shaped top. The dough release from the side of the bowl. It's not sticky to touch. Lots of bubbles and fermentation going on here. It's a well fermented dough. Actually sometimes you get that huge rise I mean the maximum oven spring with under fermented dough too. So you need to be careful. We need a well fermented dough. Not under, not over, just perfect. I'm gonna bring this bad boy on the surface and with the help of the surface rounded up one more time to create a little more tension. Because stronger gluten development give you maximum oven spring. Leave it uncovered on the counter for 20 minutes. As always for any kind of fermentation temperature plays the main role. The ideal temperature for sourdough after bulk fermentation should be something between 25 to 27 degrees celsius. I mean 27 is a bit high but 25 or something around that would be the best. Now I'm gonna let it sit uncovered on the counter for 20 minutes. Then I'm gonna shape it. For this low hydration already beautiful dough I'm gonna stick to a very simple shaping method. The goal here is to shape the dough as tight as possible. We can cold proof this bad boy overnight inside the fridge or proof it at room temperature. It's not gonna take more than one to one and a half an hour at 27 degrees celsius to proof properly. Oven adjustment my friend. I have three pan here. One at the bottom to create steam. Middle rack can be baking steel, baking stone or another upside down tray and the last one on the top to not let the crust to form faster. Or you can skip the last tray and cover the dough for the first 20 minutes to get maximum oven spring. Or forget about all of this and just use dutch oven. How we know the dough is ready? Poke test my friend. Poke the dough gently. If it bounces back slowly it's ready to bake. Now that we have a well proof dough time to bring it on the baking paper or a baking mat in this case. Look how form it is and how holding its shape that's also very important. And now let's talk about scoring. Don't go too much on the side instead score a bit closer to the center but with angle of course. Somewhere like this would be perfect. That's how the dough gonna burst up like this inside the oven and you get a beautiful ear. Now if you score with 90 degree angle like this the dough gonna open up like this. Turn the blade 45 degree angle and it's gonna open up beautifully. But make sure you score it deep enough. Go under the dough a bit. Let me show you how I do it. One clean and quick motion. Trim little bit on the side. Do you see how deep it is? That's what I'm talking about. I'm gonna spray little water to get crispier crust. Into the preheated oven bake at 230 degree celsius. A cup or half a cup of boiling water to create steam. Shut the door quickly. For example do you see the difference between these two gorgeous loaves? The one at the left this one I score it not quite well but this one scored perfectly. Of course nothing wrong with the other one but here we just talk about ear. I mean look at it. Back to our gorgeous loaf which has baked perfectly. Look at that huge ear. Time to reduce the hydration after 20 minutes and if there is any remaining water we need to remove that too. Bake for another 25 minutes. Good thing about this method is you can bake multiple bread at the same time. Something like four to six loaves. You just need to swap the loaf after the first 20 minutes. These are 20% rye and whole wheat. Gorgeous right? And here you have it my beautiful plain sourdough with little bit of rye to enhances the flavor and texture. I mean look at this nice ear. Look at this gorgeous belly. That's what I'm talking about my friend. I have another one on the left with higher hydration something like 73%. So if you do everything correctly with gluten development and stuff you're gonna get the same result with higher hydration too right? But if you're a rookie baker reducing the hydration immediately gives you the result. Let's cut into it and see what we got inside shall we? I mean wow a gorgeous open crumb low hydration sourdough bread. You are welcome my friend. If you found this video useful for any reason you can subscribe my channel so you don't miss my next video. Like always keep baking and take a good care of yourself. By the way let's check the one with 73% hydration as well. Yep that's gorgeous too. You can get the same result with higher hydration too. But you need a stronger flour and working on gluten development properly. Alright I guess that was it. Happy baking!