Q&A Dense or Gummy Crumb
Q: The crumb of my bread is dense, with small holes, and sometimes there are dense areas in the bottom half of the slices. How do I fix this?
A: First, be aware that our expectations for bread’s texture are shaped by our experience with commercial bread, a product that is made with dough conditioners and other additives that keep the loaves very soft. Homemade bread made from stored high-moisture dough is denser and more toothsome than commercial white bread. But there are several things that can help you to achieve a crumb with a more open hole structure:
1. For white-flour recipes, are you using something other than U.S. all-purpose flour? If so, check this page for water adjustments.
2. Make sure that your dough is not too wet or too dry, both extremes will result in a dense crumb. You can check to see if you are using the right amount of water for the type of flour you use (click here to check). And make sure you are measuring using the scoop-and-sweep method, click here for a video of that.
3. Be gentle! Once you determine that your dough is the right consistency then make sure you are handling it very gently. I find that people tend to want to knead the dough, even a little. This knocks the gas out of the dough and will give you a dense crumb. When shaping the dough be very careful to leave as much of the air bubbles in tact as possible. These bubbles will create the holes in the bread. We say to shape the dough for about 30-60 seconds, but we’ve come to think that even that is too long. Try getting it down to 2-40 seconds.
4. Try a longer rest after shaping: In my first book (Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day–2007), I opted for a very short rest time, usually 40 minutes for one-pound loaves made mostly with white flour. For most readers, that was enough to prevent dense results. But others found this to be a little dense, especially if your kitchen is cooler than 68 degrees. Try 60, or even 90 minutes for white-flour loaves, and see what you think. Whole grain loaves almost always need a 90 minute rest.
5. Longer-stored doughs may be best for flatbread: If you are using a dough that is close to 2 weeks old or older, you may want to stick to pizza, pita, naan or another option from the flat bread chapters in the books, or from my pizza and flatbread book. The yeast will not have its full power and if baked as a high loaf it may come out denser than you want.
6. Check your oven temperature: Use something like this thermometer on Amazon; if your oven’s off, you won’t get proper “oven spring” and the loaf can be dense.
The “refrigerator rise” trick is convenient and results in a nice open crumb:
It’s also super-convenient, allowing you to shape your dough and then have it rise in the refrigerator for 8 to 14 hours before baking. This is what you do:
1. If you want fresh dinnertime bread or rolls, then first thing in the morning cut off a piece of dough and shape it as normal. Place the dough on a sheet of parchment, loosely wrap with plastic and put it back in the refrigerator. If you want to bake first thing in the morning, shape and refrigerate at bedtime.
2. Eight to fourteen hours later, the loaves or rolls may have spread slightly, and may not seem to have risen at all. Don’t panic, they will still have great oven spring! Because you don’t handle the dough at all after the refrigerator rise the bubbles in the dough should still be intact. Preheat your oven with a stone on the middle rack to 475 degrees. When the oven is nice and hot take out your cold dough, slash it as normal and bake per recipe directions. Allow to cool and serve.
More in The New Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, and my other books.
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Hi Judy,
It sounds like maybe the loaf needs to rest a bit longer before baking and bake it for slightly longer. Do you know how large the loaf was? If it is any larger than we say in the book it will require more rising and baking time.
Once the dough is chilled it is much denser than some of the other breads because of the chocolate and the butter. It is more of a pressing it into shape than trying to stretch the dough.
Be sure to allow the chilled loaf a nice long rise before baking, especially if your kitchen is at all cool.
I hope this helps. if not, let me know and we can go from there.
Thanks, Zoë
Hi Zoe, I took a couple of classes from you at Cooks of Crocus Hill a couple of years ago. When I heard about your book, I had to have it, and I am now a convert! The correspondence on this website is very helpful also. I am excited about the refrigerator rise method because it fits my lifestyle. I am wondering if the very high oven temperature is necessary for the refrigerator rise method? I would like to make the Buttermilk bread, but it bakes in a loaf pan at 350 degrees… would that work? I am also wondering if the buttermilk bread recipe could be used as the base for sticky pecan caramel rolls. Thanks!
Hi Shelley,
Thank you so much for trying out the book. I’m so glad you are enjoying it.
It is an excellent point that you make. The breads that have any sweetener in them or are enriched with butter and eggs should be baked at the lower temperature as indicated in the book. These doughs are much more sensitive to high temperatures.
The buttermilk dough will make excellent pecan rolls.
Thanks and enjoy. Zoë
Dear Zoe and Jeff–
On baking either the boule or baguette, I am having trouble with the crumb. Although I hand mix the dough completely, invariably the crumb is coming out ever so slightly more damp in some spots–it looks like very subtle marbling. It tastes wonderful, but I was wondering what I was doing wrong. It is quite possible that I need to be less delicate with the initial mix. This does not happen with fougasses, pizzas or pitas. Thanks for all your help.
Michele
Flatbreads are always the easiest with our method; there’s less weight pushing down on our rising air pockets (our air pockets don’t have quite the power of fresh dough). A couple of things:
1. Are you making bigger loaves? Anything larger than a pound and you have to increase the rest time to 1.5 hours, and in some cases nearly double the baking time (for a 3 pound loaf).
2. Could you be overhandling the loaves as you shape them? Try to cloak in under 30 seconds and you’ll compress the crumb less (what your getting sounds like compressed crumb).
3. Check your oven temp (always a good idea).
4. Are you using unbleached all-purpose flour (bleached flour is going to yield a too-wet result and that’s tough to dry out properly in the oven).
Let me know how you find it!
Jeff
Thanks Jeff. Before I get to your questions is it possible that I should back out 1/4 cup water to the dough??
Here is the answer to your comments–
1. I am making one pound loaves.
2. I do cloak fast–but I will try faster. Am resting for 1.5 hours before baking.
3. Oven temp 450–measured.
4. Bought unbleached flour.
The bread has a crumb, it slices like it should. It just looks slightly marbled. I have baked it for 10 minutes longer and added foil at last 10.
You guys are the best.
Oh, now that I am becoming more confident with your dough, I am expanding to traditional pasta. My culinary adventures with Mario and Lidia have been taken to a whole new level.
Thanks
Michele
Jeff,
So I reflected upon your comments about overhandling of the dough and I realized that when I was mixing it by hand to achieve a well mixed dough, I was actually overmixing it.
This morning, I mixed a new batch with a wooden spoon–handling it as little as possible. It rose beautifully. I made a boule with a much faster cloak (baking 40 minutes) and the crumb is lovely. I just had a piece and it is the best boule I have ever made.
Now I have to practice making the baguette. I find taking a ball down to a 12 x 2 rectangle to be a challenge without overhandling.
I think I will also experiment with the refrig rise.
Thanks again.
Michele
OK, this is a success story! You are so patient to have not only worked through all this, but posted to us the whole time.
With the baguette, I assume you’ve seen these pictures: https://artisanbreadinfive.com/?p=152. The first part of that is all baguette, see what you think. Jeff
Thanks Jeff.
I had previously seen those photos, but I forgot about them…. I bet they prove most helpful!!
I make 1/2 batches, so with the last 1/2 I will try the boule.
Thanks again.
Michele
Jeff,
Used your illustrated technique to make the baguette this a.m. Shaping was so much faster!! It baked up much better than before–almost perfect. Being impatient and multi-tasking, I think I still fought the dough a bit with very minor marbles.
Next baguette, I will be more patient. If that does not get me the result I want, I will slightly back out some water.
Thanks for all your support. Your’s and Zoe’s comments and new recipes are critical to your success (not to mention all your readers).
Michele
Michele: This is great– now you’re ready to try to pain d’epi! Jeff
Hi,
I got the book a couple of days ago and I’m still trying to get the boule right… It tastes delicious but I can’t get big holes no matter what. The main problem for me is that once the boule rises (1-1.5 hs), I slash it but never springs back too much when I put it in the oven. I’d like to know what I’m doing wrong, if I’m letting it rise for too long or if the dough is too wet or who knows… I’ll keep trying, your suggestions will be welcome!
Gabriel: You’ve already found our “Dense Crumb” page and I assume you’ve tried everything here. In my experience, the most likely cause for a loaf that doesn’t perform the way you like is that the baker is over-handling it while shaping, or punching down the mixture once it completely rises. Both of those dissipate the precious gas that our method needs in order to rise nicely.
That said, it’s true that our shaped loaves don’t get as much counter-top rise while resting before being baked. Relatively speaking, we get more of our lift from oven-spring than the counter-top rise. All of this can be confusing for experienced bakers, which I’m assuming you are.
Try to shape your loaf in 30 seconds or less, or for an even more dramatic experiment, don’t shape it at all. Just plop a lump of dough onto your pizza peel or parchment and rest it. See what happens.
Also, test your oven temperature with a thermometer, that could be a cause of poor oven spring (if it’s too low), and consider a longer pre-heat (that also boosts oven spring).
Let me know how you make out here, and thanks for trying our method!
Jeff
Hi,
I bought your book (last Monday) and have been making bread for the week.
I love the deli-style rye. I made it for the first time yesterday and had a “fluke.” I had a great looking piece of bread. The second time, it wasn’t too great. The flavour was still there, but it was dense and the crust was too hard.
I find that I’m having problems with all my breads having overly hard and thick crusts. Any way to fix this?
The “fluke” winner bread has a thin crust and it more than doubled in size after baking. The dense, overly crusty breads did not really increase in size. I’ve tried looking for the answer in the book and on this site but can’t seem to find the specifics.
If you guys can point me to the answer or an explanation, that would be much appreciated.
Thanks!
JS: Thanks for the questions, the deli rye is my favorite as well, so here goes:
Our dough goes through maturation as you age it in your refrigerator; for Deli Rye that’s 14 days. Over that time, the resulting breads develop progressively more sourdough characteristics. That’s because by-products of yeast fermentation are building up in the dough. Traditional recipes say that you can’t do this without “feeding” the dough (replacing some of the old stuff with new every once in a while). We proved them wrong.
Having said that, we also understood that bread made from our older dough would rise a little less than the fresh stuff. For most tasters, that didn’t matter– in general they preferred the older ones. But it sounds like for you, you’re finding the older stuff too dense. So here’s what I’d do: When using an older dough, let the formed loaves rest for a longer time. Rather than 40 minutes, go for an hour and 20 minutes and see if you prefer the result. The loaf might spread sideways a bit, but that’s not really a big deal.
Let us know how you make out with this! Jeff
Hi, I love your book and the idea behind it. We always get a good first loaf, but seldom a second or third good loaf. Going to your site, we discovered several things we were doing wrong and were able to fix those.
We are still getting somewhat gooey, shiny insides on some loaves after the first one. I am wondering if we are making them too large. Would that cause the problem? The last loaf didn’t seem finished after 30 minutes. We accidentally cooked it another 25 minutes. It didn’t look burnt, but the inside still had a shiny, unpleasant texture. Maybe you have covered this problem on your site, however I wasn’t able to find it.
Thanks so much for your help. 🙂
Ellen: Welcome to the site! I’d agree that too-large loaves are more difficult to achieve a great result. How large a loaf are we talking about? Do you have a scale to weigh them?
And have you checked your oven temperature with an inexpensive oven thermometer? Most are way off… Jeff
Thank you for your response, Jeff!
I try to make the loaves the size of a grapefruit, but have trouble judging the size by sight. I think I tend to err on the large size. We do have a scale. Should the dough weigh a pound? I will try weighing the dough to get the correct weight. I will also check the oven temperature with an oven thermometer to see if the oven is off.
I also love the deli rye bread. It reminds me of the rye bread we used to have when I was a child.
I have been skimming through these entries and came up with a possibly foolish question…is there a difference between the “rise” and “oven spring”? I am trying to find out why my boules have smaller holes and more dense interior now than the first loaves I made. (beginners’ luck??!?) I still love the bread but know it can be better.
WOW, Am I impressed with this bread baking technique. I’ve been baking bread off & on (mostly off since I work fulltime) and this is so easy!
I discovered you both via an article in Mother Earth. Since then, I told my sister about the article and the book and we’ve both been on a bread baking frenzy since – thanks so much. My hubbie is a happy camper and is looking forward to me making bialys !!
Thanks for writing Christy. We’re very excited about Mother Earth, so many new people that we’ve reached through that. Jeff
I did it! Your book is wonderfully written, conversational, precise and informative. Thanks! Just a few questions about my loaf. It seemed to rise up but not out. It was carmel colored and had a moist (dense?) interior. In a perfect loaf (!) how big should the airholes be? And a question about the oven thermometer. Where in the oven should it be? Our oven usually runs 25 degrees hot so I set it for 425. The oven reached temperature in about 10 minutes but the thermometer, which was hanging off the bottom rack which was on the lowest rung (accident) read 500! I baked it for about 35 mintues and it was golden. Thanks again. This is so much fun!
Hi Anne, welcome to the site.
Airholes: Depends what you’re looking for. In a rustic European country loaf, you want lots of big irregular holes– you’d use the oldest dough you have, maybe even mix the stuff a little wetter. For an American-style sandwich loaf, you’d want smaller holes, all about the same size. So you’d use “younger” dough.
It’s a matter of taste really. About the temp… try measuring in the middle of the oven, sounds like you have the temp correct. I bet it will read 450 there.
Thanks for all the kind words!
I’m on to my second batch! I worked with the oven and think I’ve got the temperature right. Just a couple questions:
1. What is the difference between parchment and wax paper. I am having a lot of trouble with smoking cornmeal and would like to try it on parchment paper.
2. My first batch was the master recipe. The second was the light whole wheat. I left the remnants of the first dough in the container. Can you mix and match different types of dough? Any incompatible ones? I assume after a batch or two it’s time to wash!
3. When I mixed (by hand with a dough hook) the light whole wheat looked drier than the boule dough. It now looks the same as the other after its 2 hour countertop rise. Is that normal?
4. I think there is a lot of variation in the amt of flour I scoop. I bought a 12 inch long and 6 inch high container to put the flour in so I wouldn’t be fighting the bag. Should I fluff it up a little before scooping or should it be fairly dense in the measuring cup? Or maybe I should just weigh it?!?!?
Thanks again for answering so quickly and completely. It really helps to fuel the enthusiasm! Just wondering Jeff, did this idea first arise from a batch gone horribly wrong or did you set out to try for something like this?
Sorry, I forgot to ask if all the free form breads like the boule or light whole wheat can be made in a loaf pan? Thanks.
Hi Ann Marie,
1. wax paper has a coating on it that will melt at high temperatures, it will stick to your bread and pizza stone. Not to mention it too will smoke. So you want to stick to parchment paper. They should be clearly labeled at the store. I just found a nice parchment at costco.
2.It is a great idea to start a new batch with the remnants of an old one. The only ones this can’t be done with are the enriched doughs. These are doughs that have and eggs, milk or other dairy.
3. whole grain doughs do look and act differently than the doughs made with all-purpose flour. Yours sounds just right.
4. weighing is always the most accurate. We do not aerate the flour first and use a scoop and sweep method. 1 cup = 5 ounces of all-purpose flour.
Any of the doughs can be baked in a loaf pan. You will want to let them rise a bit longer and bake them for longer as well, depending on the size of the pan.
Thanks! Enjoy the bread!
Zoë
I wrote to the blog earlier about the lack of air holes in my bread. I received an answer in four minutes!! WOW! I then read everyone’s questions and answers and went from there. Tonight my bread was light and airy. Just what I had hoped for. I took the dough out yesterday afternoon, shaped it very fast and placed it on the pizza peel. Late this afternoon I baked it, but it was stuck to the pizza peel even though I dusted it with corn meal. I now realize I should have put it on parchment paper due to the length of time it was on the pizza peel – it was a cold rise and not on my shelf. I had a bit of trouble getting it off the peel, so it sank a bit, but the crust was wonderful and so was the crumb – light and airy. My husband loved both, but said he would like a little more flavor as in yeast flavor. I cut back on the salt since I used table salt. Now that I have the crust and crumb situation in order, where do I go from here to get more yeast flavor? It has a wonderful aroma in the bowl – oh, my first rise was about seven hours on the shelf. It just kept on slowly rising and I just left it so more air would get incorporated. I’m thinking the long first rise and the long cold rise on the peel definitely contributed to the wonderful air holes in the crumb – now the yeast flavor! What is your thought on that? Thanks for your time and suggestions – they certainly have helped me so far. Alison
Allison: Sounds like you’re looking for more natural sourdough characteristic and less commercial yeast flavor. So I’m going to suggest that you decrease the yeast. That will slow things down but give more time for complex flavors to develop. See our post on this: https://artisanbreadinfive.com/?p=85 And perhaps try to stagger your batches so you’re always baking with stuff that’s at least 4 to 5 days old. Maybe try that first.
If you really get into this, we’ll have to talk about natural yeast starters, which we felt was too finicky for our books, but that’s a story for another day! Jeff
Thanks so much. I will go with your suggestion and report back on the next batch of dough to let you know how it turns out. What a great time I’m having experimenting and not having all the work of kneading! Alison
I made the light whole wheat in a loaf pan and I do believe it was the first perfect thing I have ever made! (My kids excepted of course!) I was wondering about temperature.
1. I baked at 380 which was 1/2 way between different numbers I found in your book for loaf breads. Is there a general guideline for this? I think it was in the oven for about 40 minutes.
2. I let it rest for 1 hr 40 mins. Do this for all loaf breads?
3. I forgot to slash the top and thought that would make for a denser bread but it looked and tasted great. Is slashing for cosmetic reasons only?
4. I found parchment paper. Not easy in Brooklyn Iowa! Do I cornmeal the paper? Can I then shake off the excess so it won’t burn?
5. The book says only the boule dough for baguettes but someone else mentioned using other types of dough. I was going to do the light whole wheat tonight. Is that ok?
Thanks for being so patient with a non non baker! At least your eyeballs will get good exercise with all the rolling!
Thanks!
Whoa! Now that is one ugly piece of bread! I really hope you’re going to say that ww is not appropriate for baguettes! In addition to the forked tongue it also has scales, and some strange cinch in the middle. It also would NOT bake — I think it was in there for 45 minutes. Yikes! Probably no more than I deserve, but I’ve gotten used to effortless success!
Anne Marie: In general you can bake loaf versions of free-forms at the same temperature as the original recipe, just longer. Temp mainly depends on ingredients (sweets and eggy things need lower temp for longer; lean doughs can bake at higher temp).
Slashing’s cosmetic, yes.
Won’t need cornmeal with the parchment.
And, you can make anything out of anything, adjusting temp as needed. Won’t be as traditional, but that’s the fun of it.
Check your oven temp with a thermometer, it sounds like it’s running cool. Jeff
I wrote last week about the lack of flavor in my loaf. Here is what I did this weekend – I used the dough that had been in the refrig for almost two weeks. I took a large chunk, worked very fast and placed it on parchment paper on the pizza peel – no corn meal or flour. I let it cold sit for 24 hours with a damp tea towel over the dough. Today I put the pizza peel with the dough, still covered with the damp towel, on the kitchen shelf for about six hours. I transferred the parchment paper with the dough to the heated stone in the oven and hoped for the best. I ended up with a beautiful loaf of bread – golden brown chewy crust, nice rise, fairly airy crumb and a very nice sour flavor, but not heavily sour, just very nice. My husband, who was looking for more flavor to the bread declared this loaf delicious! I also bought the oven thermometer and made sure the oven was at exactly 450 degrees. I think I found what I was looking for in texture, flavor and appearance. It took me several attempts, like lots of other things that need to be tweaked for personal preference, but this method sure works for me. Now on to other recipes from the book! Thanks for all your efforts, they sure are paying off. Alison
Thanks Alison, this sounds like a version of the refrigerator rise that we talked about elsewhere on the site.
You sound like you’re partial to sourdough flavor and you found a way to get exactly what you want. Jeff
I just got your book and made my first bread today. It was so good, my husband and I ate the whole thing so I made another one for tonight.
If you are using a hot oven and are concerned about the cornmeal burning on the stone, use semolina flour instead. It works just like the cornmeal but without the smoke and burning at high temps.
Question: How low can I go on the salt in the bread? I am on a very low salt diet and these breads are much, much too high in salt for me. I know the salt inhibits the growth of the yeast, so if I go too low, will the refrigerated Boule or other doughs rise too much? Salt is 590 mg. sodium per QUARTER teaspoon. I am limited to 1000 mg per DAY, so 1.5 TB is 10,600 mg, or 2655 mg per 1-lb load. That is way over my limit. How low can I go?
Hello. My loafs come out tasty but extremely hard and thick exterior, difficult to cut even with a cerrated knife. I rest them in the fridge and bake at 475 for about 30 to 40 min. What am I doing wrong?
Hi Catherine,
You can eliminate the salt all together if you need to. Its main function in our recipe is taste and we encourage people to adjust it to suit their palate or dietary needs!
Thanks and enjoy the bread! Zoë
Hi IK,
Are you baking on a stone? Is it in the middle of the oven?
Depending on the size of the loaf you may be leaving the loaf in the oven for too long. We generally say about 30 minutes should do it.
Let me know and we’ll take it from there!
Thanks, Zoë
1 lb, maybe a little smaller, they come out really small, length of a travel coffee mug. I am using the stone and it is in the middle of the oven.
Hi Ik,
It sounds like your breads are not rising enough during the refrigerator rise and could use a bit of time on the counter to warm up before baking. Sometimes just the amount of time that it takes your stone to heat up (20-30) minutes is adequate.
Zoë
Ik: One other idea to check– are you using steam in the oven as we specify in the book? W/O it, you get a very hard crust if you leave it in long enough to be brown. Jeff
Hi Jeff!!
Last summer you were able to coach me on my dense/condensed crumb, and guided me through your technique to make a baguette per your pain d’epi instructions on this site. The baguette that resulted was somewhat more chubby and short than is classic but the crumb was fine.
From looking at photos here of other baguettes, I noticed that your students were having the same problem and I pondered what I could do to add length without compressing the crumb.
Reading the book’s instructions and combining it with your site instructions provided the best result.
Specifically, once the ball was formed, I pulled it out to a rectangle the length of my desired baguette. I did not roll it, since I thought it might compress crumb. Then I folded it into thirds and pulled it out a little more and formed into the final form for resting.
Once baked the crumb was great and it was a skinny baguette. I was particularly motivated to get this right because I want to make Zoe’s tomato baguette and I want it to look like hers.
Thanks for all your efforts keeping track of your followers.
Michele
I’ve been making your bread for over a year now, and the family is still enjoying every crumb! This weekend I’ll be making it for the in-laws for the first time. I won’t be at home, and I won’t have access to an oven right when I need it – but OF COURSE I want fresh, hot bread. Have you experimented with par-baking at all? Do you have any hints that might help make this as impressive away as it is at home?
LOVE THE BOOK AND THE BREAD!!
Diana
Welcome to the site Diana. Instructions for parbaking are in the book, and it works well. It’s just before the Master Recipe chapter; there are certain things we don’t give the recipe for on our website and this is needs to be one of them. There’s lots of free content on this site though…
Thanks for the info – unfortunately I loaned my book to a friend (so she could also fall in love with the bread and then buy her own copy!). I guess I’ll have to call her and have her read it to me.
hi! i’ve been baking bread since i was 10 (18 years ago) and for whatever reason, i can’t get anything other than very dense bread out of these recipes. the flavor has been great, and i’m really impressed with the ease of use, but somewhere along the line, i’m screwing something up.
yesterday i made up the brioche dough, and let it rise for nearly 5 hours in order to get it to actually rise. i’m attributing that issue to a pretty chilly house… but when it got put in the fridge, there were beautiful open holes (pics on the blog). this afternoon though, once i shaped it (which i’m pretty sure i’m doing wrong) it was a pretty dense flat little loaf. it barely doubled during the rising time (which was done in a barely warmed oven because the house was cold) and rose decently while baking.
the flavor was great, but it was dense as all get out. now, this is my first experience with brioche, so if dense is good, then i’m happy. but when i made the boule dough a while ago, i had a rock hard loaf of bread that tasted good if you could chew it.
any thoughts on this quandary? i love making bread, and i really want the ease of your process. i just am getting pretty bummed with my results.
could this issue be affected by me not shaping the loaf quick enough?
Catherine: Experienced bakers have the most trouble with our method! In general, the explanation is that they are either:
1. Punching down the dough after the initial rise (don’t).
2. Kneading (don’t)
3. Spending too much time on the shaping (cloaking) step. 30 seconds should do it.
Then there’s the resting time. It sounds like you will like this bread better with a longer rest– rather than 40 minutes as written in most of our recipes, why don’t you try 60 to 90 minutes and see what you think.
Also, are you using unbleached all-purpose flour (bleached doesn’t work)?
See some other info:
https://artisanbreadinfive.com/?p=141
At 475 would I still bake for 30 minutes?
What is the shortest amount of time – and the longest, that you can the shaped dough in the fridge before baking.
Rising the regular way – outside of fridge, can you over-rise. I have been doing it for 1 hour and 40 minutes as you suggested.
How do you know when it has reached it’s maximum time? …. and what happens if you let it rise too long.
Thanks.
One more question (for now) .. I have been using a loaf pan for my pumpernickel – more uniform slices for sandwiches.
Can I do the refrigerator rest for the dough while it is in the pan and then bake at 475 degrees????