The super-hot air is able to circulate around the bread while it’s baking, even inside a Dutch oven due to surface temperature. But here’s the difference – the cavity in your kitchen oven is much larger than a bread maker and much hotter. We go out of our way to create steam in sourdough making. In this environment, however, sourdough rises only a little and the crust becomes chewy instead of crunchy. Have you ever noticed that the loaves of bread made in your bread machine are always a light golden colour and never glossy? This is why! They were baked in steam and didn’t fully dry out. This is great for creating yeasted loaves that are soft inside with a thin and soft/crunchy crust. The rising bread then sweats throughout the entire bake time. Remember a bread machine is hot, but it’s not super and so with all that water in the dough coming out, it gets trapped, making it a sauna inside. You will also get a better crust.īread dough releases moisture as it cooks and when baked in a bread machine, it gets trapped inside the tiny environment. Baking your sourdough bread in your oven instead of your bread machine allows you to shape and slash your sourdough bread to look professional.Ī strong dough will hold its shape without the need for a bread tin. Hand shaped, no two loaves ever the same. Sourdough is well-loved for being ‘Artisan’. These few extra degrees and the pre-heat ability makes a big difference to the size of the loaf and colour of the crust when making sourdough bread. Ideally, it will reach 250 ☌ ( 482 ☏), which you can pre-heat before the dough comes anywhere near it. In comparison, your kitchen oven is likely to reach at least 220 ☌ ( 428 ☏). They just can’t offer the same initial hit of heat or level of heat.
Sourdough bread relies on the super high heat of your kitchen oven for its rising boost and a bread machine heats up slowly with the dough inside. This is great for making a yummy loaf of bread using yeast. Making a good loaf of sourdough bread is signed, sealed and delivered in the heat of the oven it’s baked in and most bread machines have a maximum oven temperature of 200 ☌ ( 392 ☏). The fast pre-programmed timing of your bread machine will result in an under-proofed sourdough loaf that’s immature, dense and chewy. Yeast is a fast action beast compared to sourdough. At best this will 1/4 of the time needed for the sourdough starter to fully work its magic. The preset timing modes of your bread maker are set to the time, temperature and stages of working with yeast to make homemade bread. This makes a wonderful loaf of bread! It just won’t work for sourdough and here’s why. Your bread machine is geared to make yeasted bread, often with supermarket pre-mixes. Using your bread machine to make sourdough is a great idea, but it has limitations.
Using a bread machine to make sourdough bread Pantry Sourdough Starter – Bread Recipe.Low-Maintenance Sourdough Starter ~ Bread Recipe.