Wow, I tried wiping my blade down with oil yesterday and I was amazed how much easier the scoring process was. Thanks for that tip! Now I’m going to wipe down before every loaf I score.
@@aesaehttr - the small amount of chewy crust is often fought over in our house. I’m trying to figure out how to make more so the kids don’t argue about it as much.
This is the technique I've been searching for. I too thought that I was was slicing at a 45 angle. The info you provided is a real revelation to me. The solution is so simple but I kept on making the same mistake. I thought the problem was the softness of the dough. Thankyou so much for all the work you've done and for sharing the correct information.
Great illustration! Drawing a 90 and 45 degree angle at various points around the circumference of the loaf is a real opener. Thank you. I like to score further down on each end of the batard loaf getting as close to the bottom as possible. The longer cut allows the ear to open further. Keep up the great work!
You are definitely onto something here! I’m a very new baker. I’ve been making sourdough bread for about four months, 2-4 loaves/week. I scored and baked two loaves today, one with the lame more horizontal and the other with it the same angle I had been using (the “wrong 45-degree” angle). The difference is well over an inch!!!
I found the most important factor in getting good ear is achieving great tension(without tearing) on the surface of the dough. The angled score does help, but not nearly as much as starting with good tension.
Wow, I took a break from this channel for a few months and I am astounded by how much more professional your videos are now. Both in terms of production and presentation. Well done!
In this crazy world where people can be so unkind, your comment warmed my heart and made me smile - your comment is one of true kindness. It was a pleasure to read today. Thank you
@@Beckelbay so, basically you are pretty harsh with your comment on the fact that previous video's where bad. The guy says thank you and your respons to that is to make YOU yourself feel very good about yourself. Wtf. It was only a 'thank you'. You must have issues of some sort.
@@sarjenka Ok I'm a little confused by your comment. I think it's cause you think the the person you replied to is the same person who wrote the original comment, but they are different accounts.
The white board said it all! Wow. So helpful. THANK YOU. If I accidentally don't score deep enough, I just slice again right inside the old cut and make it nearly horizontal.
You can read about this in detail in my free book called “The Sourdough Framework”. You can get it here: thbrco.io/book. You can support the project with a donation, but there is absolutely no knead. I believe information like this should be free and accessible to everyone. The book is made for everyone who wants to understand the important details when making sourdough bread. Thank you!
That's a very methodical approach, but the best bread I've ever had came from a pottery oven in my backyard. The (Portuguese) husband used to heat up the oven at the weekends and bake some bread, before his wife would bake the pots in it. Each of these breads was perfect, by being imperfect. It had all the flavor explosion you describe, but it didn't look amazing. Sometimes perfection is not achieved just by doing everything right, but by giving it your own spin, too.
I think we can summarize that scoring angle should be calculated not for your hand solely ( to earth's surface ), but rather between the blade and the surface of the bread.
or slice it as if you want to slice the "hood" of the baguette sideways as if you are trying to slice the top part of that baguette !! if you imagine you are going to slice the baguette sideways in 3 layers it would be the top slice the right scoring point!! i
I have been working with sourdough for one year this February and continue to learn every time I bake it. You have magically suggested to adjust the lame angle and it has changed my life… literally. I usually use Dutch ovens for baking and now, when I remove the cover, I’m ALWAYS amazed with such beautiful ears! Thank you soooo much. Ears 🥂to you for the great video….
I love your videos. As a retired medical laboratory scientist and avid baker, your persistence in testing and scientifically searching for answers makes me laugh. I totally understand your methodology. This scoring business has baffled me for so long! I’m set up to start a new boule tomorrow. I can’t wait to try the horizontal angle. Fingers crossed.
> I love your videos. As a retired... Funny, I'm also retired but I still don't have time to sit through a 14 minute video that could be explained in 14 seconds.
Thank you for this video and tutorial through your personal process of learning. I love that you share your sources too. It makes me so excited to start baking my bread!
Thank you for sharing this!! This feels like it's obvious and yet my mind is blown, haha. My scoring feels like it has been just awful lately so this gives me hope. I'm very excited to make more loaves now.
I’m so delighted to have just walked through the door of making really great sour dough bread and all it encompasses! I couldn’t figure out why mine was not what I dreamed it should be! And now to learn about the importance of scoring properly… thank you sooo much!!
Julia Child did 2 episodes of the French Chef about baguettes. She was in a French bakery and he made a point of explaining how to score, including holding it horizontally. I learned a lot from those epusodes.
Unfortunately alot of French bakeries have machines that shape the baguettes which means you don't get the nice ovals in the score with the ears which comes from preshaping and shaping by hand
@@stuartanselin9133 i havent had using a baguette roller effect my scoring at all, i still get ears on my baguettes. when i don't it's because i am rushing and not allowing the dough to rest for long enough before baking
Thanks for this very useful discussion. I’ve always found it much easier to score the loaf by taking it out after it’s been in the oven for 3 minutes and has begun to form a very slight crust.
Wow, sir, once again I have learned another great tip. Obviously you're not alone, I didn't know that I was also scoring bread incorrectly. Hahaa, and this summer I picked up one of those fancy blade tools to help me score better. And as a fellow engineer, I feel your need for perfection. After all, if it's not perfect, there's room for improvement & troubleshooting lol. Thanks again! 😎👍
“He cuts- he SCORES!” Very informative video- thanks again for diving deeper into scoring. When observing a baker, the act of scoring is done so quickly and subtly it’s not easy to see the mechanics at play. (Your diagram should be in bread baking books, btw.)
This makes so much sense!! It seems to me if you were going to rewrite the instructions in all those recipes, what you would want to say is: *Score the dough at a 45 degree angle, **_tangential_** to the curve of the loaf at the point in which you are scoring it.* Which also means for scoring patterns that traverse the top of the loaf, on loaves with more roundness to them (like boules), your perfectly 45 degree tangential angle will actually be _changing_ as you score. Which just goes to show why extremely experienced bakers can get a perfect score every time, with it seeming almost like magic - they’ve practiced it so much, they’re subconsciously adjusting the angling of the blade as they’re moving it across the surface of the dough, so as to perfectly match that 45 degree angle relative to the place on the bread in which they’re cutting!! In other words: *practice!!*
As a baker, NEVER, score your bread before you proof. Do it after the proof -- you get that nice change of colors between the score and the surrounding bread which makes it look so professional! Don't score too deep, but not too shallow either.
100% support this comment. At a grocery store bakery I worked at for a while, most would score before proofing for time savings. The customers that gave compliments for how good and attractive my loaves were, scored after a proper proof, affirmed that the best breads are worth the time and effort,
@@righanrook476 I never heard of scoring before proofing. I always see bakers score it after proofing. The only thing that is being scored before doing anything else were... meat. You score before marinate.
when i got a generic "UFO Bread Lame" last year it really really helped to make easy & constant cuts. i feel like ive mostly aimed for a 45-60 angle from about the 1 o'clock position in the loaf, turns out good.
Man! Thanks a lot for this insight. I was doing exactly the SAME!!! and thinking the same way about this 45°. I can’t wait to try that on my next loaf. It makes so much sense and if it works it will be a game changer. The ears I get goes from a A+ to a C- so I hope I can have more A+ with this angle attention.
Have watched and enjoyed nearly all of your videos - all worthwhile, but this one is I think just what I needed at my own stage of baking. I had no idea of the importance of the angle, but it makes complete sense. Thanks a lot for all your work! Good refs to Patrick Ryan: also great tuition.
Too long didn't watch (TLDW): Respect the curve of your dough. It might be round when using a banneton and thus your 45° angle changes depending on where score.
I read somewhere that a curved blade also helps create bigger ears so I ordered one and am waiting for it to arrive to test it out. :D Also, I'm wondering if the direction of the rolled dough vs the direction of the slash might have an effect due to (maybe) a difference in tension (if that makes any sense)?
Nice to know. How do you bake baguettes without a dutch oven in a standard home baker's oven? I guess I don't understand how to control the steam. I always feel my scores never do well once I'm not using a dutch oven, no matter the other parameters involved.
Finally! This is the breakthrough I needed. I'd tried EVERYTHING to get good - and by that I mean ANY - oven spring: - Dutch oven vs uncovered/steam bath - Baking stone vs steel - Water spray vs none - Long first/second rise vs short - Tight shaping vs more gentle shaping - No-knead method vs lengthy mixing - Hotter oven vs cooler - Stiff starter vs watery, lots of starter vs little... I've happily baked yeasted bread for a decade but only focused on wetter sourdoughs properly about a year ago, and it has been a dispiriting process, watching loaf after loaf leave the oven like a gnarly pancake. As well as putting the dough in the freezer shortly before baking to make the scoring easier (as advised previously), I followed this video and tried a shallow, horizontal cut instead of slashing deep through the loaf, and the bread hit the ceiling of the Dutch oven! Fingers crossed, I'll now be able to sleep at night without being haunted by the graveyard of doughs I've butchered in the past 12 months...
I appreciate the efforts of a good engineer! Most people just find a video that "works" an sticks with it... you've saved me hours of searching.... for something as simple as "scoring" the bread! Again, tnx from Canada!
I’ve had no trouble getting ears but I’d like to get more oven spring. I’ve been consistently getting very good results but I’d like to get great results. Next baking session I’ll give this a whirl!!
Wow …I am not a bread baking hobbyist, just was passing by and stopped to watch…now you make me want to learn! Great video, funny jokes, and excellent research. Thanks for all your effort! I bake nice bread in general, but now I’m going to learn artisan style like you!
I discovered the importance of a flatter angle myself via a different video, but it's a great point and I think you're probably right about it often not being emphasized enough. Two other things that helped me with baguettes: bending the blade into a curve and dusting the top with flour before scoring. The curve really helps and it's easy to do without purchasing a special tool: just put a bamboo skewer or a coffee stir stick through the holes in the center of the blade which will hold it in a curve. Dusting the top will help keep the blade from sticking, as will moving quickly and not stopping im the middle of the cut (I've seen people talking about using water or oil on the blade but this is not how baguettes are scored and it is completely unnecessary with the proper technique. Danke und liebe gruess!
I guess it has to do with the gluten layers. You want to simply slice through the outer layer that has been in contact with air, and allow the inner dough to rise. But you don't want to slice through the horizontal layer of gluten that you built with so much effort. So you need to score parallel to the gluten layers while making an incision through the outer, harder layer.
IMPORTANT TIP REGARDING ENZYMATIC POWER (and chilldown): Dont ignore the possible role of too long an autolyse for the level of enzymatic power present in your dough. One of the 2 main enzymes relevent during autolyse is protease (the other is amalyse), which denatures proteins/gluten, and if done to excess can degrade a dough in much the same way that increasing acidity can carry it past peak if not timed properly. Yes, you want the improved extensibility from autolyse, but you dont want to overweaken it by overdoing it. I recently learned this lesson after messing around with diastatic barley malt flour (DBMF), and with self-milled & sieved flour from self-sprouted kamut. Both are highly enzymatically active, but of the two the former is by far the most powerful and requires the least amount (typically 0.5% of your total flour weight). For the latter, I found upto 10% of my total flour to be plenty, and it not only eliminates the need to buy and use DBMF, but it has much better flavor. The important takeaway is that the more of either you use (DBMF or Sprouted Grain Flour) the more you need to decrease the time spent on autolyse/ferment (but not proofing/leavening), otherwise excessive protease activity can overweaken a dough, causing it to spread/degas excessively instead of rising during baking (i.e., oven spring). Also, self ground flour that's not ground finely enough, and not sieved to remove bran and overlarge particles, can cause gluten tearing and encourage degassing after laming. Ive learned to limit my use of it to 20% or less of my total flour. Last, a prebake chilldown of at least 1 hour helps scoring and ear formation as well as oven spring by allowing the dough to form a pellicle (skin), which helps the ear hold shape during initial baking AND helps the skin trap more of the internal steam during same. The result is a better crust, more defined ear, and better ovenspring. It took me a good 8-10 baking sessions to fully figure that out.
LOVE these observations! I think I have been over-autolysing (so many simultaneous tasks in the bakery). I need to rework my flow to have the time for the pre-bake chill down. I'm shaping/proofing after other delivieries and under deadline, so that's hard to do. Do you think I could shape in evening and slow proof in the fridge overnight, then score and bake in the morning?
@@lizamwebb Absolutely yes. AFAIK its what most pro bakers who know what theyre doing regarding sourdough actually do do (pun intended) ... ive seen it called "cold retardation", and a few other things. In actuality it works more like a SLOW button than a PAUSE. More on pellicles ... if found it to be of great help for freestanding loaves like the 1kg boules ive been making, because the increasingly thick skin that forms help support the shape and maintain its height (like the wall of a balloon). Freestanding loaves seem to benefit most from bannetons that breathe well and/or absorb moisture, otherwise the unexposed areas of a dough remain moister and weaker than the skin up top .... so they tend to spread/flatten when unmolded. My current banneton, while excellent, is not breatheable, so spreading was an issue for me. If however you proof and bake a loaf inside a loaf pan or mold (which I recently started playing with), breathability is less important because the loaf pan itself provides the support, so the pellicle just helps enable an attractive scoreing pattern, color contrast and a deeper ear up top. For 1kg boules I allow 2 hrs for 2 mixing passes, and 4-5 folding passes, each with 15 min rests between for gluten relaxation, then final fabrication and reshaping and transfer to a banneton - I try to maintain 95F throughout the 2hr fabrication interval. I proof at ambient room temp instead of 95F so that any yeasts present dont outrace the sourdough microbial activity and autolysis ... i let it continue autolysing and fermenting/leavening (in tandem) until its risen to about 80% of where I want it (usually another 2-4 hrs at ambient temp) then ill park it uncovered in my fridge for retardation (read: slows down activity to about 1/5th normal) and to form a pellicle. I'll usually bake it off after several hours or overnight in the fridge. Most bakeries I know proof overnight in their walk in, then bake early in the morning for max freshness and texture. Since I dont sell my bread, my baking schedule is driven by convenience and/or the desired strength of pellicle. After 100+ boules, I recently switchee to using a nonstick 9x5" steel loaf pan (for better height and regular sized slices) - for those, I proof, retard and bake directly in the pan, whereas for my freestanding boules i usexa parchment sling to lift out of the banneton and onto a round ceramic pizza stone inside a preheated 10" cast iron dutch oven (conv bake 451F for 20 mins covered plus 6 mins uncovered).
Sorry to keep rambling. I just wanted to reiterate that im just a self taught learn-as-i-go amateur when it comes to sourdough baking. I'm not a pro. That being said, I do sorta feel like im somewhere in the middle of the intermediate level skill pool. 😀
@@RovingPunster Thank you so much! I’m commercial, doing 1 kg batard (freestanding), have a proofer w/ steam, and good, breathable bannatons. I don’t have deck ovens 😩, so I’m thinking of a stone or steel. I’ve retarded in fridge overnight… I just get tired early evening after having worked non-stop since 3 am (I do pastry, too), so I have been bulk retarding overnight and shaping etc in the mornings. So you are mixing, resting for an hour or so, then mixing again, bf stretch/folds? Is this for gluten development? Windowpane? In a mixer, or by hand? I’m doing multiple batards, so mixer is my best option. The pellicle aspect is fascinating, and I think that is going to help my oven spring, in addition to more mixing. Love how much you know. Thx for taking the time!
@@lizamwebb Since i just bake for a household of two (plus gifts) I have the luxury of working by hand. I have a stand mixer, but for breadmaking i only use it for pizza dough in bulk, as its unstructured. From memory for my freestanding boules I do 70% hydration, my total protein averages around 13%, and I use a self cultured sourdough starter for most of the flavor texture and leavening, plus a tiny amount of supplemental commercial yeast in winter (my household ambient is 65F ish in winter and 72-75F summer). My propagation starters are tiny 20 gr affairs p fed on kamut grit, and my full size stepup starters are 120gr per 1kg boule/loaf and are fed on my self ground and sieved wholemeal kamut flour (which my sourdough culture loves far more than straightwhite flour). My starters double in 4-5 hrs after 20% pitch, which is pretty vigorous, so I can stepup 5x every 5 hrs from a 20gr start ... meaning minimal waste and max vigor. ilIf in not using it same day, ill park a ready to go starter in the fr8dge for upto 1-2 days, and if I dont use it by then i can wait upto 7-10 days before repropagation and stepup, and the surplus discard goes into a glass jar for use in muffins or batters or mixing into dhokla/dosa. I never use discard for bread because its over tart and overautolyzed, and increasingly resembles sour toothpaste over time ... too much gluten has denatured. As for fabrication, from memory, I hand mix, rest 15, hand mix again (bray & roll), rest 15, then I do 4-5 folding passes each wilth a 15 min rest ... for each folding pass i currently use a 5 step (pentagonal) stretch n fold back pattern going counterclockwise around the dough, then I re-invert it and reshape into a ball before returining it to its covered 2L cambro tub for resting. Between the 95F I maintain, the vigor of my culture, and the small amt of supplemental yeast, the dough is usually starting to leaven noticeably by the 4th folding pass, and about 50% (and very relaxed due to autolysis) when its time to fabricate. To fabricate ill shape into a lg rectangle about 1/2" thick, fold crosswise into the center from the sides, pinch the seam shut, then ill use a lg dowel to widen the far end into an upside down trapezoid, then roll the dough up under tension from near to far to form a taught log ... then pinch the seam and ends shut. For a loaf I invert and xfer it into a loaf pan for proofing, and for a boule ill roll the ends under the middle, invert a bowl over it and let it rest 8 mins for the glutens to relax, then finish reshaping into a classic boule. Takes longer to describe it than to do it. 😁
Totally agree with what you said in the video! I feel that it’s a bit like peeling the surface off, I think. Yes, I always wonder why everyone is saying 45 degrees which will not work perfectly. Your drawing explain very clearly. Thank you so much!
Thank you so very much. I just started, I've only made 5 Artesian loads so far and no to sourdough. Your video REALLY explains good. I appreciate you. I'm watching from Beautiful Southern Iowa ❤️ 1/12/23 Happy new year folks
I do the final rise overnight in the fridge (sourdough) which I find makes scoring easier - it can be done with just one swipe of the blade. I’ll try the ‘true’ 45 degree angle though and see if it makes a difference. Thank you for your tips and links. Much loaf!
Because I've just happened upon your comment, because i'm in the middle of making round loaves and baguettes, because I've wanted to refrigerate - haven't yet - and you do...would you mind sharing a few sentences of what your procedure is as it relates to refrigeration? Specifically, how long must it be out of the fridge before you bake? I mix, raise an hour, fold/stretch 5 times every 30 mins, raise another hour or two then bake in a dutch oven. You?
Initial sourdough proving of 3hrs, knead, shape, place in banneton, leave in fridge overnight (8-12hrs), rest while oven comes up to temp (mine is electric) with tray of water at bottom, turn dough onto floured baking sheet (rice flour), score, flour top, pop into oven. Still playing with temp! And like you, one of the things I most look forward to is listening to it chattering away soon after it emerges from baking. Music to my ears!
Great video. I’m going to try this. However I never payed much attention to the angle of my razor blade before I say your video and I have to tell you that I always have bread with a nice ear. So I wonder if a flat angle really does make such a big difference. I typically score at a 45 degrees angle.
Great video as usual! I have tried to follow the scoring from videos…and sometimes it is great…sometimes it is not. However, I think that i will have to work on my scoring next. I think I have finally mastered my one recipe…and this week i tried it in Sonoma with cool weather! It worked fabulously. Also my starter has now traveled to Sonoma…very close to San Francisco, sourdough’s home…I think it will be great to see how it works back home in Florida. Lastly, i have been making sourdough baguettes…and i love them. They still have a bit of yeast but not much. I also have a recipe with no yeast…but have not used it in a while. Would love to get your recipe to try it out!
Excellent description of the issue. In the commercial bakery I managed we made our baguette in the afternoon and refrigerated them overnight, and then made the coup and loaded them without any additional proofing. Loaded them at 480 F with steam and cut the heat to 425 F (in rotating convection ovens). As you make clear the trick is to come in at an angle and undercut the dough to produce a "flap". We taught our bakers to overlap each cut by nearly 50% which resulted in great volume and ears (which we called "le gringne").
I think scoring is the least of my problems lol. Baking bread for me seems to range from easy to impossible. My biggest problem is any kind of consistency. I don't think that i've ever successfully made the same thing twice. There are so many variables like you stated: fermentation, ambient temperature, etc. but even before that, having a good recipe, good ingredients, and the right tools. I love the idea of baking my own breads and pizza crusts but, I have to get lucky to even like, and actually wanna eat, what comes out of my oven. It's very discouraging.
I'm right there with you friend. Trust me when I say you will come to a point when you will be confident that your bread will come out great. Then you'll turn your attention to scoring. Bake on from Texas.
I was the same till I used my kitchen scale and followed my recipe using grams. Came out the same all the time which gave me time to focus on the next thing... Hence learning how to cut properly. My favorite quote still... "There's no such thing as a bad loaf".
This information has been great. Watched this right before I had to score my dough and the ear that I got today is the best I've ever gotten it. Danke schön!
I really don’t bake enough. This video is making me hungry by the way. I’ve never made this kind of bread that gets scored but your angles drawing really sets off how easy it is to make this mistake. 90^ changes as you go around a round-ish object. Fun video. 💜
It took me some time to find out for myself. One day I decided to experiment and made a cut almost horizontal and I then thought what the heck, started to slash underneath the skin of the dough just to see what happens. Lo and behold, miracles happened. I had the best ear ever.
you really amped up your hardware / setting etc overall nicer production quality - great. Like the new look & feel. Looks crisp just like a good crust.
Omg!! Thank you thank you thank you !I was baking sourdough bread since COVID this is my new COVID hobby ,it was always delicious but never look right and the problem obviously was because I was cutting wrong .I finally made today my bread and it’s gorgeous and delicious thank you so much God bless you and your family
There is still one big difference between your scoring and the one in the last video you linked (Karl and Puratos): the blade is curved! I'm not an expert, but all (professional baguette) bakers say, that this is very important for baguette scoring. This is the reason, why the scoring knife (actually only the wooden handle) you showed at the beginning has usually also a metallic "blade holder" for baguette scoring.
Watching this in 2023. This is very very informative! Thank you! I'm a new sourdough homebaker and just been baking for 3 months. Thanks for sharing your knowledge!🎉
Thank you so much for this lesson! I have been struggling with the scoring step so this will help. But I have a question - I am also an engineer and appreciated your drawings. Where is that 1 cm distance to the right that you mentioned? It would have been useful to see it on your sketches.
Very informative. PLEASE take care in future videos to show this scoring process up close and personal. That way we get to see both the scoring, angle of the blade and the final results. You a perfectionist? (cracked me up)
Hi Henrik, i have been watching and liking all you videos, you are the reason my bread baking has flourished. This video is spot on, thanks so much. P.S. You would be a great coffee roaster also.
Thank you for this! You mentioned that you still want to get better so here’s what I see. Even when you’re trying to cut horizontally it looks to me I’m the video like your hand is still tilting closer to 45 degrees by the time you’re halfway through your score. My background makes me look at body mechanics so i noticed something. Go back and watch Vincent score the baguettes. Don’t look at the lame, look at his body. He has a scoring stance that allows him to make perfect horizontal motion. The bread is also angled to accommodate this motion. Put the bread where the natural horizontal motion happens.
Today I just created my first starter! He is so quick, vigorous and ugly; I've call it "RonJeremy"! It took me less then 60 seconds and 3 spoons of flour... 1-I've mixed 3 spoons of whole wheat flour plus some water to make a light paste in a glass 2-I put a cling wrap and left it in a warm area 3-That's it! So... within 24h: My new starter grow 3 times it's volume! How cool is that! There is no point to weight and no point to use more than 3 tables spoon either. "A" First feeding preparation: -Pour water in a clean glass (about 1cm in the bottom) -Add 1 spoon of whole wheat flour -Add 1 spoon of white flour unbleached -Mix with a spoon to create a light paste "B" The dirty part of feeding: -Use the same spoon and mix "RonJeremy", the starter mix, not the actor -Then, come back with that "dirty spoon" and mix the fresh mix again -Repeat "A" + "B" once a day for a week -Leave it in a warm place The remaining old "RonJeremy" can be discarded or used to mix with any recipe that need flour. When I will need a larger quantity for a recipe, I will add the required amount of flour the day before. Otherwise, I'll keep it to a minimum volume (under 4 spoon) in the fridge.
What I believe the purpose of this explanation is to say “score your loaf at a 45 degree angle relative to the surface of the loaf at that point. Which means you need to bot only consider where you start your score, but also keep your hand following the contour of the loaf during the scoring process as the blade ‘circumcuts’ over the rounded surface. Great tip!!!
I found you funny and I love a person who can show their mistakes and how they have learned to do better. I learned a lot. My challenge is that my only oven is an 11cm high gas pizza oven. It’s a challenge but I’m loving the journey.
Thanks! This answers a lot of questions and suspicions I have had over the past 2 years. I am 63 years old and have been cooking gourmet (mostly French trained) since the age of 8, but only recently started baking or should I say have become obsessed with pizza. Having master pizza at home, I found that I had a lot of left over dough (as it is just my wife and myself) and not wanting to waste it I turn it into bread. It makes a wonderful round rustic bread with beautiful crust and internal texture. The scoring has always been an issue and know I know why. I will give this technique a try and more importantly I will set my oven to 446 F to see what happens. I have been starting at 500 F for 10 minutes then down to 475 F for 10 more minutes then out of the dutch oven at 475 F for 15 minutes or until internal temp is 190 degrees. I love your passion and thought maybe I was the only one out there secretly obsessed with that elusive crust, crispy ear and unbelievably complex flavor and array of textures of not only freshly baked bread, but also 2-3 days later the nuances of toasting or grilling the sliced bread. THANK YOU for sharing the knowledge... I can tell you that in the USA I am single handily destroying the mind sets of my dinner guests just with the bread.... sure the starters and main courses were unbelievable, but they remember the fresh bread and tell their friend about the bread they had. Too bad it takes days to make... 2 of my 5 brothers have also caught the bug and now family reunions are 2-6 day baking events, where we try to out do each other and share new techniques. Please keep up the GREAT WORK and research!
Thank you! 🙏 Yes ...it is such a good lesson! My sourdough scoring is like so difficult and never turn out right! Thanks to your video and teaching! I am gonna try again and again with paying attention to my angle of the blade. Hope i will get nice rabbit ear soonest! 🙏🙏
Excellent discussion on angle of scoring and whether you get an ear or not. Will be paying more attention to the angle going forward - closer to 180° or almost horiz.
Great Video! A question, please: I've been making good baguettes for a while but I'm still not happy with the interior texture. Not enough holes consistently. I'm using an 80% hydration which makes for a better texture than when I was using only 65% but it also makes the dough more slack and, therefore, more difficult to score without tearing. Any thoughts / suggestions would be most appreciated! mac a. 5
Well I just made my first sourdough loaf and I should have taken a picture. Maybe it was beginners luck but it turned out perfectly with a good ear. So now I think I just jinxed myself, lol. The loaf is gone already, everyone loved it. Making another 2 today. This time I'll take pictures. Your videos are great in that I'm learning so much from you. Thank you.
Thank you. This was my problem as well. I cut at an angle, but not nearly a big enough angle. Every once in a while I would nail it, but I never quite knew what I did diferently. This is eye opeing. Danke.
THANK YOU!!! you always share good stuffs. so if i score at the middle of my sourdough, 90" is the way to go right? also i notice in this video, you did not score all the way down. is that the right way to score too? million thanks
Brilliantly done! Wonderful sequential build-up; well documented and easy to follow. I love diving into source material so thank you for providing it! Well done!
Very interesting video, thanks. For a descendant of bakers, from which I can no longer learn, this is precious. Though, my family bakers, didn't scoured the dough, and still got the crust perfect. There was steam involved (don't know at which point), a "strong" oven and the dough was simply folded once. It would open along the fold. By strong oven I don't really know what they meant... there were 2 ovens, which looked like would reach the same temperature. But the 1st they ordered wasn't..."strong enough"! The manufacturer then made a 2nd oven, going a bit over their rules 😬 and then they got it right. The same dough would rise and open differently 🤷♀️ Before they used fire heated, clay bricks oven.
Thank you, thank you, thank you. I have been looking for some instructions on how to score the bread for a very long time. I look forward to trying it this weekend. Regards, Stefan.
Thabks for the awesome tip. I hadn't realised that the 45 drgee angle should be with respect to the surface of the douch. I think you would get better results if you score the dough in swift quick movements
This video is gold right here. I just so happen to score it correctly, because I watched how you did it and not listen to the 45 angle tip. Still, with smaller things like buns or baguettes I ran into the same problem! So thank you for pointing out the obvious, haha. Grüße nach Deutschland!
Can you please do a video of scoring before and after the final proof? Ie right after shaping vs right before it goes in the oven? I'm still on the fence since I used to always score before baking but recently was shown to score right after shaping
Wiping the blade with a paper towel with a bit of oil makes scoring smoother. It also helps keep the blade clean and clear for longer.
Wow, I tried wiping my blade down with oil yesterday and I was amazed how much easier the scoring process was. Thanks for that tip! Now I’m going to wipe down before every loaf I score.
I always wet the blade. Does the trick too.
great tip!
The problem it that the crusty parts that scoring creates are made slightly chewier with oil. Water works well and doesn't create the permanent chew.
@@aesaehttr - the small amount of chewy crust is often fought over in our house. I’m trying to figure out how to make more so the kids don’t argue about it as much.
This is the technique I've been searching for. I too thought that I was was slicing at a 45 angle. The info you provided is a real revelation to me. The solution is so simple but I kept on making the same mistake. I thought the problem was the softness of the dough. Thankyou so much for all the work you've done and for sharing the correct information.
Great illustration! Drawing a 90 and 45 degree angle at various points around the circumference of the loaf is a real opener. Thank you. I like to score further down on each end of the batard loaf getting as close to the bottom as possible. The longer cut allows the ear to open further. Keep up the great work!
You are definitely onto something here! I’m a very new baker. I’ve been making sourdough bread for about four months, 2-4 loaves/week. I scored and baked two loaves today, one with the lame more horizontal and the other with it the same angle I had been using (the “wrong 45-degree” angle). The difference is well over an inch!!!
I found the most important factor in getting good ear is achieving great tension(without tearing) on the surface of the dough. The angled score does help, but not nearly as much as starting with good tension.
I appreciate the math. As a fellow engineer and baker (hobby), now I know how to adjust my scoring angle. Thank you for this. Such an eye-opener.
Wow, I took a break from this channel for a few months and I am astounded by how much more professional your videos are now. Both in terms of production and presentation. Well done!
Thank you 👍
In this crazy world where people can be so unkind, your comment warmed my heart and made me smile - your comment is one of true kindness. It was a pleasure to read today. Thank you
@@Beckelbay so, basically you are pretty harsh with your comment on the fact that previous video's where bad. The guy says thank you and your respons to that is to make YOU yourself feel very good about yourself. Wtf. It was only a 'thank you'. You must have issues of some sort.
@@sarjenka Good grief. Get over yourself and go bake some bread! lol
@@sarjenka Ok I'm a little confused by your comment. I think it's cause you think the the person you replied to is the same person who wrote the original comment, but they are different accounts.
The white board said it all! Wow. So helpful. THANK YOU. If I accidentally don't score deep enough, I just slice again right inside the old cut and make it nearly horizontal.
You can read about this in detail in my free book called “The Sourdough Framework”. You can get it here: thbrco.io/book. You can support the project with a donation, but there is absolutely no knead. I believe information like this should be free and accessible to everyone. The book is made for everyone who wants to understand the important details when making sourdough bread. Thank you!
Wow, thank you so much for your dedication !
That's a very methodical approach, but the best bread I've ever had came from a pottery oven in my backyard. The (Portuguese) husband used to heat up the oven at the weekends and bake some bread, before his wife would bake the pots in it. Each of these breads was perfect, by being imperfect. It had all the flavor explosion you describe, but it didn't look amazing. Sometimes perfection is not achieved just by doing everything right, but by giving it your own spin, too.
I think we can summarize that scoring angle should be calculated not for your hand solely ( to earth's surface ), but rather between the blade and the surface of the bread.
or slice it as if you want to slice the "hood" of the baguette sideways as if you are trying to slice the top part of that baguette !! if you imagine you are going to slice the baguette sideways in 3 layers it would be the top slice the right scoring point!!
i
I have been working with sourdough for one year this February and continue to learn every time I bake it. You have magically suggested to adjust the lame angle and it has changed my life… literally. I usually use Dutch ovens for baking and now, when I remove the cover, I’m ALWAYS amazed with such beautiful ears! Thank you soooo much.
Ears 🥂to you for the great video….
I love your videos. As a retired medical laboratory scientist and avid baker, your persistence in testing and scientifically searching for answers makes me laugh. I totally understand your methodology. This scoring business has baffled me for so long! I’m set up to start a new boule tomorrow. I can’t wait to try the horizontal angle. Fingers crossed.
> I love your videos. As a retired...
Funny, I'm also retired but I still don't have time to sit through a 14 minute video that could be explained in 14 seconds.
Thank you for this video and tutorial through your personal process of learning. I love that you share your sources too. It makes me so excited to start baking my bread!
Perfect timing since I have been trying to perfect baguette baking lately. Thank you again!!Great tips!!
Thank you for sharing this!! This feels like it's obvious and yet my mind is blown, haha. My scoring feels like it has been just awful lately so this gives me hope. I'm very excited to make more loaves now.
I’m so delighted to have just walked through the door of making really great sour dough bread and all it encompasses!
I couldn’t figure out why mine was not what I dreamed it should be! And now to learn about the importance of scoring properly… thank you sooo much!!
Julia Child did 2 episodes of the French Chef about baguettes. She was in a French bakery and he made a point of explaining how to score, including holding it horizontally. I learned a lot from those epusodes.
Unfortunately alot of French bakeries have machines that shape the baguettes which means you don't get the nice ovals in the score with the ears which comes from preshaping and shaping by hand
Horisontal to the earth or perpendicular to the surface of the dough?
@@aggese I think to be precise it would be 45 degrees in relation to the tangent of the surface of the dough where you are scoring.
@@stuartanselin9133 i havent had using a baguette roller effect my scoring at all, i still get ears on my baguettes. when i don't it's because i am rushing and not allowing the dough to rest for long enough before baking
Thanks for this very useful discussion. I’ve always found it much easier to score the loaf by taking it out after it’s been in the oven for 3 minutes and has begun to form a very slight crust.
Good point!
Wow, sir, once again I have learned another great tip. Obviously you're not alone, I didn't know that I was also scoring bread incorrectly. Hahaa, and this summer I picked up one of those fancy blade tools to help me score better. And as a fellow engineer, I feel your need for perfection. After all, if it's not perfect, there's room for improvement & troubleshooting lol.
Thanks again! 😎👍
“He cuts- he SCORES!” Very informative video- thanks again for diving deeper into scoring. When observing a baker, the act of scoring is done so quickly and subtly it’s not easy to see the mechanics at play. (Your diagram should be in bread baking books, btw.)
This makes so much sense!!
It seems to me if you were going to rewrite the instructions in all those recipes, what you would want to say is:
*Score the dough at a 45 degree angle, **_tangential_** to the curve of the loaf at the point in which you are scoring it.*
Which also means for scoring patterns that traverse the top of the loaf, on loaves with more roundness to them (like boules), your perfectly 45 degree tangential angle will actually be _changing_ as you score. Which just goes to show why extremely experienced bakers can get a perfect score every time, with it seeming almost like magic - they’ve practiced it so much, they’re subconsciously adjusting the angling of the blade as they’re moving it across the surface of the dough, so as to perfectly match that 45 degree angle relative to the place on the bread in which they’re cutting!!
In other words: *practice!!*
🙌🏼💝 Thank you 😩🙏🏼
As a baker, NEVER, score your bread before you proof. Do it after the proof -- you get that nice change of colors between the score and the surrounding bread which makes it look so professional! Don't score too deep, but not too shallow either.
100% support this comment. At a grocery store bakery I worked at for a while, most would score before proofing for time savings. The customers that gave compliments for how good and attractive my loaves were, scored after a proper proof, affirmed that the best breads are worth the time and effort,
@@righanrook476 I've never heard of scoring before proofing. I've never seen it done. That's just bizarre.
@@righanrook476 I never heard of scoring before proofing. I always see bakers score it after proofing. The only thing that is being scored before doing anything else were... meat. You score before marinate.
proof? :o
@@zzBaBzz proof basically is a baker's term for letting the bread rise.
when i got a generic "UFO Bread Lame" last year it really really helped to make easy & constant cuts. i feel like ive mostly aimed for a 45-60 angle from about the 1 o'clock position in the loaf, turns out good.
Man! Thanks a lot for this insight. I was doing exactly the SAME!!! and thinking the same way about this 45°. I can’t wait to try that on my next loaf. It makes so much sense and if it works it will be a game changer. The ears I get goes from a A+ to a C- so I hope I can have more A+ with this angle attention.
I never thought about the roundness of the loaf! Wow…the light came on! Thank you! Well worth the entire watch.
Just what I needed! Can't wait to try this on my next bake. Ty!!
Have watched and enjoyed nearly all of your videos - all worthwhile, but this one is I think just what I needed at my own stage of baking. I had no idea of the importance of the angle, but it makes complete sense. Thanks a lot for all your work! Good refs to Patrick Ryan: also great tuition.
This worked!! Today I had my very very first ‘ear’ bread and I am beyond excitement!!
Too long didn't watch (TLDW): Respect the curve of your dough. It might be round when using a banneton and thus your 45° angle changes depending on where score.
?1?!! not really that much. Anyone thinking about the principle as they scribe should be able to get it right...
I read somewhere that a curved blade also helps create bigger ears so I ordered one and am waiting for it to arrive to test it out. :D Also, I'm wondering if the direction of the rolled dough vs the direction of the slash might have an effect due to (maybe) a difference in tension (if that makes any sense)?
Oh, and I watched the whole video. I was just hoping that replying to your comment would increase the odds of you reading my post. :P
Nice to know. How do you bake baguettes without a dutch oven in a standard home baker's oven? I guess I don't understand how to control the steam. I always feel my scores never do well once I'm not using a dutch oven, no matter the other parameters involved.
A razor blade is relatively sharp? relative to what! That thing could cut through you like butter if you're not careful
Finally! This is the breakthrough I needed. I'd tried EVERYTHING to get good - and by that I mean ANY - oven spring:
- Dutch oven vs uncovered/steam bath
- Baking stone vs steel
- Water spray vs none
- Long first/second rise vs short
- Tight shaping vs more gentle shaping
- No-knead method vs lengthy mixing
- Hotter oven vs cooler
- Stiff starter vs watery, lots of starter vs little...
I've happily baked yeasted bread for a decade but only focused on wetter sourdoughs properly about a year ago, and it has been a dispiriting process, watching loaf after loaf leave the oven like a gnarly pancake. As well as putting the dough in the freezer shortly before baking to make the scoring easier (as advised previously), I followed this video and tried a shallow, horizontal cut instead of slashing deep through the loaf, and the bread hit the ceiling of the Dutch oven! Fingers crossed, I'll now be able to sleep at night without being haunted by the graveyard of doughs I've butchered in the past 12 months...
I appreciate the efforts of a good engineer! Most people just find a video that "works" an sticks with it... you've saved me hours of searching.... for something as simple as "scoring" the bread! Again, tnx from Canada!
I’ve had no trouble getting ears but I’d like to get more oven spring. I’ve been consistently getting very good results but I’d like to get great results. Next baking session I’ll give this a whirl!!
Hi Hendrik! I also found that if I wet my blade before scoring (dip-score, dip-score) it cuts cleaner. Much Loufe, Eddie
Wow …I am not a bread baking hobbyist, just was passing by and stopped to watch…now you make me want to learn! Great video, funny jokes, and excellent research. Thanks for all your effort! I bake nice bread in general, but now I’m going to learn artisan style like you!
I discovered the importance of a flatter angle myself via a different video, but it's a great point and I think you're probably right about it often not being emphasized enough. Two other things that helped me with baguettes: bending the blade into a curve and dusting the top with flour before scoring. The curve really helps and it's easy to do without purchasing a special tool: just put a bamboo skewer or a coffee stir stick through the holes in the center of the blade which will hold it in a curve. Dusting the top will help keep the blade from sticking, as will moving quickly and not stopping im the middle of the cut (I've seen people talking about using water or oil on the blade but this is not how baguettes are scored and it is completely unnecessary with the proper technique. Danke und liebe gruess!
so with a curved blade do you score the bread in a straight line or follow the curve of the blade?
I guess it has to do with the gluten layers. You want to simply slice through the outer layer that has been in contact with air, and allow the inner dough to rise. But you don't want to slice through the horizontal layer of gluten that you built with so much effort. So you need to score parallel to the gluten layers while making an incision through the outer, harder layer.
Harry, that's so smart!
But how can you tell its parallel?
IMPORTANT TIP REGARDING ENZYMATIC POWER (and chilldown): Dont ignore the possible role of too long an autolyse for the level of enzymatic power present in your dough. One of the 2 main enzymes relevent during autolyse is protease (the other is amalyse), which denatures proteins/gluten, and if done to excess can degrade a dough in much the same way that increasing acidity can carry it past peak if not timed properly. Yes, you want the improved extensibility from autolyse, but you dont want to overweaken it by overdoing it.
I recently learned this lesson after messing around with diastatic barley malt flour (DBMF), and with self-milled & sieved flour from self-sprouted kamut. Both are highly enzymatically active, but of the two the former is by far the most powerful and requires the least amount (typically 0.5% of your total flour weight). For the latter, I found upto 10% of my total flour to be plenty, and it not only eliminates the need to buy and use DBMF, but it has much better flavor.
The important takeaway is that the more of either you use (DBMF or Sprouted Grain Flour) the more you need to decrease the time spent on autolyse/ferment (but not proofing/leavening), otherwise excessive protease activity can overweaken a dough, causing it to spread/degas excessively instead of rising during baking (i.e., oven spring).
Also, self ground flour that's not ground finely enough, and not sieved to remove bran and overlarge particles, can cause gluten tearing and encourage degassing after laming. Ive learned to limit my use of it to 20% or less of my total flour.
Last, a prebake chilldown of at least 1 hour helps scoring and ear formation as well as oven spring by allowing the dough to form a pellicle (skin), which helps the ear hold shape during initial baking AND helps the skin trap more of the internal steam during same. The result is a better crust, more defined ear, and better ovenspring.
It took me a good 8-10 baking sessions to fully figure that out.
LOVE these observations! I think I have been over-autolysing (so many simultaneous tasks in the bakery). I need to rework my flow to have the time for the pre-bake chill down. I'm shaping/proofing after other delivieries and under deadline, so that's hard to do. Do you think I could shape in evening and slow proof in the fridge overnight, then score and bake in the morning?
@@lizamwebb Absolutely yes. AFAIK its what most pro bakers who know what theyre doing regarding sourdough actually do do (pun intended) ... ive seen it called "cold retardation", and a few other things. In actuality it works more like a SLOW button than a PAUSE.
More on pellicles ... if found it to be of great help for freestanding loaves like the 1kg boules ive been making, because the increasingly thick skin that forms help support the shape and maintain its height (like the wall of a balloon). Freestanding loaves seem to benefit most from bannetons that breathe well and/or absorb moisture, otherwise the unexposed areas of a dough remain moister and weaker than the skin up top .... so they tend to spread/flatten when unmolded. My current banneton, while excellent, is not breatheable, so spreading was an issue for me.
If however you proof and bake a loaf inside a loaf pan or mold (which I recently started playing with), breathability is less important because the loaf pan itself provides the support, so the pellicle just helps enable an attractive scoreing pattern, color contrast and a deeper ear up top.
For 1kg boules I allow 2 hrs for 2 mixing passes, and 4-5 folding passes, each with 15 min rests between for gluten relaxation, then final fabrication and reshaping and transfer to a banneton - I try to maintain 95F throughout the 2hr fabrication interval. I proof at ambient room temp instead of 95F so that any yeasts present dont outrace the sourdough microbial activity and autolysis ... i let it continue autolysing and fermenting/leavening (in tandem) until its risen to about 80% of where I want it (usually another 2-4 hrs at ambient temp) then ill park it uncovered in my fridge for retardation (read: slows down activity to about 1/5th normal) and to form a pellicle. I'll usually bake it off after several hours or overnight in the fridge. Most bakeries I know proof overnight in their walk in, then bake early in the morning for max freshness and texture. Since I dont sell my bread, my baking schedule is driven by convenience and/or the desired strength of pellicle.
After 100+ boules, I recently switchee to using a nonstick 9x5" steel loaf pan (for better height and regular sized slices) - for those, I proof, retard and bake directly in the pan, whereas for my freestanding boules i usexa parchment sling to lift out of the banneton and onto a round ceramic pizza stone inside a preheated 10" cast iron dutch oven (conv bake 451F for 20 mins covered plus 6 mins uncovered).
Sorry to keep rambling. I just wanted to reiterate that im just a self taught learn-as-i-go amateur when it comes to sourdough baking. I'm not a pro. That being said, I do sorta feel like im somewhere in the middle of the intermediate level skill pool. 😀
@@RovingPunster Thank you so much! I’m commercial, doing 1 kg batard (freestanding), have a proofer w/ steam, and good, breathable bannatons. I don’t have deck ovens 😩, so I’m thinking of a stone or steel. I’ve retarded in fridge overnight… I just get tired early evening after having worked non-stop since 3 am (I do pastry, too), so I have been bulk retarding overnight and shaping etc in the mornings. So you are mixing, resting for an hour or so, then mixing again, bf stretch/folds? Is this for gluten development? Windowpane? In a mixer, or by hand? I’m doing multiple batards, so mixer is my best option. The pellicle aspect is fascinating, and I think that is going to help my oven spring, in addition to more mixing. Love how much you know. Thx for taking the time!
@@lizamwebb Since i just bake for a household of two (plus gifts) I have the luxury of working by hand. I have a stand mixer, but for breadmaking i only use it for pizza dough in bulk, as its unstructured.
From memory for my freestanding boules I do 70% hydration, my total protein averages around 13%, and I use a self cultured sourdough starter for most of the flavor texture and leavening, plus a tiny amount of supplemental commercial yeast in winter (my household ambient is 65F ish in winter and 72-75F summer). My propagation starters are tiny 20 gr affairs p fed on kamut grit, and my full size stepup starters are 120gr per 1kg boule/loaf and are fed on my self ground and sieved wholemeal kamut flour (which my sourdough culture loves far more than straightwhite flour). My starters double in 4-5 hrs after 20% pitch, which is pretty vigorous, so I can stepup 5x every 5 hrs from a 20gr start ... meaning minimal waste and max vigor. ilIf in not using it same day, ill park a ready to go starter in the fr8dge for upto 1-2 days, and if I dont use it by then i can wait upto 7-10 days before repropagation and stepup, and the surplus discard goes into a glass jar for use in muffins or batters or mixing into dhokla/dosa. I never use discard for bread because its over tart and overautolyzed, and increasingly resembles sour toothpaste over time ... too much gluten has denatured.
As for fabrication, from memory, I hand mix, rest 15, hand mix again (bray & roll), rest 15, then I do 4-5 folding passes each wilth a 15 min rest ... for each folding pass i currently use a 5 step (pentagonal) stretch n fold back pattern going counterclockwise around the dough, then I re-invert it and reshape into a ball before returining it to its covered 2L cambro tub for resting. Between the 95F I maintain, the vigor of my culture, and the small amt of supplemental yeast, the dough is usually starting to leaven noticeably by the 4th folding pass, and about 50% (and very relaxed due to autolysis) when its time to fabricate. To fabricate ill shape into a lg rectangle about 1/2" thick, fold crosswise into the center from the sides, pinch the seam shut, then ill use a lg dowel to widen the far end into an upside down trapezoid, then roll the dough up under tension from near to far to form a taught log ... then pinch the seam and ends shut. For a loaf I invert and xfer it into a loaf pan for proofing, and for a boule ill roll the ends under the middle, invert a bowl over it and let it rest 8 mins for the glutens to relax, then finish reshaping into a classic boule. Takes longer to describe it than to do it. 😁
Totally agree with what you said in the video! I feel that it’s a bit like peeling the surface off, I think. Yes, I always wonder why everyone is saying 45 degrees which will not work perfectly. Your drawing explain very clearly. Thank you so much!
Thank you so very much. I just started, I've only made 5 Artesian loads so far and no to sourdough. Your video REALLY explains good. I appreciate you. I'm watching from Beautiful Southern Iowa ❤️ 1/12/23
Happy new year folks
I do the final rise overnight in the fridge (sourdough) which I find makes scoring easier - it can be done with just one swipe of the blade. I’ll try the ‘true’ 45 degree angle though and see if it makes a difference. Thank you for your tips and links. Much loaf!
Because I've just happened upon your comment, because i'm in the middle of making round loaves and baguettes, because I've wanted to refrigerate - haven't yet - and you do...would you mind sharing a few sentences of what your procedure is as it relates to refrigeration?
Specifically, how long must it be out of the fridge before you bake?
I mix, raise an hour, fold/stretch 5 times every 30 mins, raise another hour or two then bake in a dutch oven.
You?
Initial sourdough proving of 3hrs, knead, shape, place in banneton, leave in fridge overnight (8-12hrs), rest while oven comes up to temp (mine is electric) with tray of water at bottom, turn dough onto floured baking sheet (rice flour), score, flour top, pop into oven. Still playing with temp! And like you, one of the things I most look forward to is listening to it chattering away soon after it emerges from baking. Music to my ears!
@@christinabullen2021 got it! Thanks.
Great video. I’m going to try this. However I never payed much attention to the angle of my razor blade before I say your video and I have to tell you that I always have bread with a nice ear. So I wonder if a flat angle really does make such a big difference. I typically score at a 45 degrees angle.
Great video as usual! I have tried to follow the scoring from videos…and sometimes it is great…sometimes it is not. However, I think that i will have to work on my scoring next. I think I have finally mastered my one recipe…and this week i tried it in Sonoma with cool weather! It worked fabulously. Also my starter has now traveled to Sonoma…very close to San Francisco, sourdough’s home…I think it will be great to see how it works back home in Florida.
Lastly, i have been making sourdough baguettes…and i love them. They still have a bit of yeast but not much. I also have a recipe with no yeast…but have not used it in a while. Would love to get your recipe to try it out!
Excellent description of the issue. In the commercial bakery I managed we made our baguette in the afternoon and refrigerated them overnight, and then made the coup and loaded them without any additional proofing. Loaded them at 480 F with steam and cut the heat to 425 F (in rotating convection ovens). As you make clear the trick is to come in at an angle and undercut the dough to produce a "flap". We taught our bakers to overlap each cut by nearly 50% which resulted in great volume and ears (which we called "le gringne").
I think scoring is the least of my problems lol. Baking bread for me seems to range from easy to impossible. My biggest problem is any kind of consistency. I don't think that i've ever successfully made the same thing twice. There are so many variables like you stated: fermentation, ambient temperature, etc. but even before that, having a good recipe, good ingredients, and the right tools. I love the idea of baking my own breads and pizza crusts but, I have to get lucky to even like, and actually wanna eat, what comes out of my oven. It's very discouraging.
I'm right there with you friend. Trust me when I say you will come to a point when you will be confident that your bread will come out great. Then you'll turn your attention to scoring. Bake on from Texas.
I was the same till I used my kitchen scale and followed my recipe using grams. Came out the same all the time which gave me time to focus on the next thing... Hence learning how to cut properly. My favorite quote still... "There's no such thing as a bad loaf".
This information has been great. Watched this right before I had to score my dough and the ear that I got today is the best I've ever gotten it. Danke schön!
You are so welcome!
this is the missing piece to many puzzles out there (including my own)! Thank you so much for dissecting this topic so masterfully.
15 min video, 15 seconds of answering the title question.
I really don’t bake enough. This video is making me hungry by the way. I’ve never made this kind of bread that gets scored but your angles drawing really sets off how easy it is to make this mistake. 90^ changes as you go around a round-ish object.
Fun video. 💜
Thank you 🤗
Thank you! I'm looking forward to improving my scoring technique now!! great presentation!
Thank you very much for this lesson!
It is a great help for me.
It took me some time to find out for myself. One day I decided to experiment and made a cut almost horizontal and I then thought what the heck, started to slash underneath the skin of the dough just to see what happens. Lo and behold, miracles happened. I had the best ear ever.
you really amped up your hardware / setting etc overall nicer production quality - great.
Like the new look & feel. Looks crisp just like a good crust.
Omg!! Thank you thank you thank you !I was baking sourdough bread since COVID this is my new COVID hobby ,it was always delicious but never look right and the problem obviously was because I was cutting wrong .I finally made today my bread and it’s gorgeous and delicious thank you so much God bless you and your family
You are so welcome!
OH MY GOSH! Thank you for sharing! Can't wait to test the scoring tomorrow.
Great video. Recommendation on the scoring... don't use a stop and go technique. One slice per score should be what you're going for.
There is still one big difference between your scoring and the one in the last video you linked (Karl and Puratos): the blade is curved! I'm not an expert, but all (professional baguette) bakers say, that this is very important for baguette scoring. This is the reason, why the scoring knife (actually only the wooden handle) you showed at the beginning has usually also a metallic "blade holder" for baguette scoring.
We curve out blades in the bakery and only use the tip. Ears on almost every loaf even the apprentice can donit
Watching this in 2023. This is very very informative! Thank you! I'm a new sourdough homebaker and just been baking for 3 months. Thanks for sharing your knowledge!🎉
Thanks, Hendrik. That clarifies lots of things. I couldn't imagine that one could learn more trigonometry through bread making.
Thank you so much for this lesson! I have been struggling with the scoring step so this will help. But I have a question - I am also an engineer and appreciated your drawings. Where is that 1 cm distance to the right that you mentioned? It would have been useful to see it on your sketches.
Thanks Candis! Good point! Try to find the center of your dough. Then just move 1cm to the right.
Very informative. PLEASE take care in future videos to show this scoring process up close and personal. That way we get to see both the scoring, angle of the blade and the final results.
You a perfectionist? (cracked me up)
I am sorry. My big fat arms were in front and made the footage not so useful. I will include it in my next full recipe update!
Thanks for the excellent tutorial. It makes so much sense when you see it.
Hi Henrik, i have been watching and liking all you videos, you are the reason my bread baking has flourished. This video is spot on, thanks so much. P.S. You would be a great coffee roaster also.
Thank you for this!
You mentioned that you still want to get better so here’s what I see.
Even when you’re trying to cut horizontally it looks to me I’m the video like your hand is still tilting closer to 45 degrees by the time you’re halfway through your score.
My background makes me look at body mechanics so i noticed something. Go back and watch Vincent score the baguettes.
Don’t look at the lame, look at his body. He has a scoring stance that allows him to make perfect horizontal motion. The bread is also angled to accommodate this motion. Put the bread where the natural horizontal motion happens.
Today I just created my first starter!
He is so quick, vigorous and ugly; I've call it "RonJeremy"!
It took me less then 60 seconds and 3 spoons of flour...
1-I've mixed 3 spoons of whole wheat flour plus some water to make a light paste in a glass
2-I put a cling wrap and left it in a warm area
3-That's it!
So... within 24h:
My new starter grow 3 times it's volume! How cool is that!
There is no point to weight and no point to use more than 3 tables spoon either.
"A" First feeding preparation:
-Pour water in a clean glass (about 1cm in the bottom)
-Add 1 spoon of whole wheat flour
-Add 1 spoon of white flour unbleached
-Mix with a spoon to create a light paste
"B" The dirty part of feeding:
-Use the same spoon and mix "RonJeremy", the starter mix, not the actor
-Then, come back with that "dirty spoon" and mix the fresh mix again
-Repeat "A" + "B" once a day for a week
-Leave it in a warm place
The remaining old "RonJeremy" can be discarded or used to mix with any recipe that need flour.
When I will need a larger quantity for a recipe, I will add the required amount of flour the day before. Otherwise, I'll keep it to a minimum volume (under 4 spoon) in the fridge.
🤣 that name
What I believe the purpose of this explanation is to say “score your loaf at a 45 degree angle relative to the surface of the loaf at that point. Which means you need to bot only consider where you start your score, but also keep your hand following the contour of the loaf during the scoring process as the blade ‘circumcuts’ over the rounded surface. Great tip!!!
Very useful lesson!
I’ll certainly be looking at this technique next time I’m preparing sourdough; a weekly event at our house!
Wow! That's 15 minutes of my life I'll never get back. This could have been presented in 30 seconds and conveyed just as much relevant information.
Amen!!
can't agree more
I saw this horizontal technique coming from the very beginning! I should have just read the comments first.
Thank you for saving others 14:30 min…really
I agree
9:36 👊🏽🙏🏽✌🏽
The most important point!
@@the_bread_code Thanks for the comprehensive video!
I found you funny and I love a person who can show their mistakes and how they have learned to do better. I learned a lot.
My challenge is that my only oven is an 11cm
high gas pizza oven. It’s a challenge but I’m loving the journey.
Thanks! This answers a lot of questions and suspicions I have had over the past 2 years. I am 63 years old and have been cooking gourmet (mostly French trained) since the age of 8, but only recently started baking or should I say have become obsessed with pizza. Having master pizza at home, I found that I had a lot of left over dough (as it is just my wife and myself) and not wanting to waste it I turn it into bread. It makes a wonderful round rustic bread with beautiful crust and internal texture. The scoring has always been an issue and know I know why. I will give this technique a try and more importantly I will set my oven to 446 F to see what happens. I have been starting at 500 F for 10 minutes then down to 475 F for 10 more minutes then out of the dutch oven at 475 F for 15 minutes or until internal temp is 190 degrees. I love your passion and thought maybe I was the only one out there secretly obsessed with that elusive crust, crispy ear and unbelievably complex flavor and array of textures of not only freshly baked bread, but also 2-3 days later the nuances of toasting or grilling the sliced bread. THANK YOU for sharing the knowledge... I can tell you that in the USA I am single handily destroying the mind sets of my dinner guests just with the bread.... sure the starters and main courses were unbelievable, but they remember the fresh bread and tell their friend about the bread they had. Too bad it takes days to make... 2 of my 5 brothers have also caught the bug and now family reunions are 2-6 day baking events, where we try to out do each other and share new techniques. Please keep up the GREAT WORK and research!
Why don't you just start with the answer? It's too long a wait.
What you came for is at 9:37
Snap your double edge blade in half (from end to end, along the length of the slot) to make it safer to use and reduce drag in the dough.
Thank you! 🙏 Yes ...it is such a good lesson! My sourdough scoring is like so difficult and never turn out right! Thanks to your video and teaching! I am gonna try again and again with paying attention to my angle of the blade. Hope i will get nice rabbit ear soonest! 🙏🙏
14 minutes to say: keep the razor horizontal and not perpendicular to the surface of the bread when scoring.
Thank you, you saved me a good 10 minutes!
couldve saved 10 mins and said, "Score on a horizontal angle" done
Excellent discussion on angle of scoring and whether you get an ear or not. Will be paying more attention to the angle going forward - closer to 180° or almost horiz.
Great Video! A question, please: I've been making good baguettes for a while but I'm still not happy with the interior texture. Not enough holes consistently. I'm using an 80% hydration which makes for a better texture than when I was using only 65% but it also makes the dough more slack and, therefore, more difficult to score without tearing. Any thoughts / suggestions would be most appreciated! mac a.
5
This was really long winded.
It didn't need to be almost 15 minutes long. Come on now 🙄
this is absolutely mindboggling, i never considered the angle consideration for the roundness of the bread! thank you
I love the way you talk about bread 💓 loving and respecting the dough - this can only be done by those who feel it, chapeau bas.
Get to the point.....
Well I just made my first sourdough loaf and I should have taken a picture. Maybe it was beginners luck but it turned out perfectly with a good ear. So now I think I just jinxed myself, lol. The loaf is gone already, everyone loved it. Making another 2 today. This time I'll take pictures. Your videos are great in that I'm learning so much from you. Thank you.
Thank you. This was my problem as well. I cut at an angle, but not nearly a big enough angle. Every once in a while I would nail it, but I never quite knew what I did diferently. This is eye opeing. Danke.
THANK YOU!!! you always share good stuffs. so if i score at the middle of my sourdough, 90" is the way to go right? also i notice in this video, you did not score all the way down. is that the right way to score too? million thanks
You definitely need to write a book! I’ve learnt more from your videos than all other videos and books put together.
You’re a Dough-Genius!
Brilliantly done! Wonderful sequential build-up; well documented and easy to follow. I love diving into source material so thank you for providing it! Well done!
Very interesting video, thanks. For a descendant of bakers, from which I can no longer learn, this is precious.
Though, my family bakers, didn't scoured the dough, and still got the crust perfect. There was steam involved (don't know at which point), a "strong" oven and the dough was simply folded once. It would open along the fold.
By strong oven I don't really know what they meant... there were 2 ovens, which looked like would reach the same temperature. But the 1st they ordered wasn't..."strong enough"! The manufacturer then made a 2nd oven, going a bit over their rules 😬 and then they got it right. The same dough would rise and open differently 🤷♀️
Before they used fire heated, clay bricks oven.
Great advice! Thank you for this lesson!
Thank you, thank you, thank you. I have been looking for some instructions on how to score the bread for a very long time. I look forward to trying it this weekend. Regards, Stefan.
Love your videos!! Always the best videos. Following your channel is delightful.
thank you very much for your grate videos. did you do a video on crust thickness. what influences the thickness?
Thabks for the awesome tip. I hadn't realised that the 45 drgee angle should be with respect to the surface of the douch. I think you would get better results if you score the dough in swift quick movements
Show him some love, loaves! This is great! I need to practice more now I know. Thank you so much for the explanations! 💖💖💖
I love your transparency, Henrik!
Been struggling with my "ear" for a long time, my loaves are excellent, but no distinct ear, I am going to try this out, thank you!!
This video is gold right here. I just so happen to score it correctly, because I watched how you did it and not listen to the 45 angle tip. Still, with smaller things like buns or baguettes I ran into the same problem! So thank you for pointing out the obvious, haha. Grüße nach Deutschland!
Thank you so much. By the way, at what angle do you tilt the bottle of Laphroaig into the glass after the bread is done?
Can you please do a video of scoring before and after the final proof? Ie right after shaping vs right before it goes in the oven? I'm still on the fence since I used to always score before baking but recently was shown to score right after shaping