If you don't have a lame, you can use a razor blade or a very sharp knife to score. The two different angles encourage two different types of openings when the dough is baked in the oven. In my bread baking, I usually like to do one of two types of scoring: one where the lame (the blade used for scoring) is at a shallow angle to the dough’s surface, and the other where the lame is straight on at a 90° angle. It’s just one of the many signs bakers use to judge whether a loaf was made with attention to each step of the baking process. An ear that’s just right - not overly large, and not extremely small - indicates a loaf that’s fermented to the right degree and one that’s likely going to have an appropriately open interior. As they often say, we eat first with our eyes!īut aside from the pure aesthetics, an ear that forms just right hints at what the loaf itself might be like. And this ear can be a single long one that runs the loaf length, or a series of small ears that form an intricate design on the top of the loaf. There’s an undeniable aesthetic charm when you see a loaf of bread with a dramatic ear that’s colored deeply in the oven. And this ear is precisely that: a flap of dough that sticks out a bit from the surface of the loaf. The spots we score into the dough end up pushing up and outward, forcing the thin, taut wrapper to peel back and create the ear. When we score our bread dough before baking, we’re intentionally providing places for the dough to split open, which allows for a steady rise in the oven. The taut wrapper created during shaping stretches outward as the loaf expands in the oven, and if left unscored, will eventually rupture erratically. This way, there’s still plenty of “life” left in the dough to rise high and expand outward in the oven. When you bake your dough, the goal is to bake it about 10% to 20% shy of what would be considered fully fermented. And this wrapper does its job of keeping the dough’s structure all the way from shaping through proofing, until the loaf is eventually scored and baked. Much like the thin but strong rubber of a water balloon, the dough-wrapper works to contain all the fermentation going on inside your dough: bubbles expanding, contracting, coalescing - an intricate three-dimensional lattice of fermented dough. When you shape bread dough with sufficient tension, you create what I like to think of as a taut wrapper outside the dough. Bread dough scored with a curved blade to promote peeling back when baking How a sourdough ear is formed They show the baker’s skill in harnessing vigorous fermentation, imparting sufficient dough strength, shaping properly, proofing appropriately, and the last step in the process: scoring effectively.įirst, let’s look at how and why an ear is formed, then see some practical ways to promote its formation. If everything goes well, these cuts open up to form defined ridges that peel back and away from the main loaf, creating what many bakers call an “ear.”Īnd while you might see these sourdough ears as mostly an aesthetic addition to a loaf, they are also indicators of success in each step of the bread baking process. When all the pieces of the baking process are just right, a loaf of sourdough bread will have a beautifully controlled rise in the oven with a crust that opens dramatically along cuts made during scoring.
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