I finally caught why my bread keeps collapsing, and it's not the yeast or temp

So I've been baking sourdough for like 6 months and kept getting flat dense loaves. Everyone online says check your starter or your oven temp. But I noticed my shaping technique was actually tearing the gluten structure every time I tried to get that tight skin. My buddy who bakes for a living watched me do it and said I'm overworking the dough after the bulk ferment. Now I'm wondering is the real trick just shaping way less aggressively than all those videos show? Has anyone else found that their biggest win came from changing something tiny like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

beth27616d ago

Yeah @jamesf29 probably owed that dough money too, but gentle hands fix flat bread.

jamesf2917d ago

Learned the hard way that handling dough like it owes you money never works out.

-1

christopherw3417d ago

Yeah, I read somewhere that overworking dough is the number one mistake people make. Sounds like you found that out the messy way.