Help required for a pale crust...

Sam,

Like the others have said, I think you need to get steam into your oven somehow to get a different crust. My gas oven gives a crust like yours if I don't use a lot of steam.

What I would really like to ask is how did you take the excellent pictures? IMO they are about as good as they get.

Thanks gt

[size=150]Gawsh!!![/size] I'd love to have breads like that!

What do you mean by using semolina for final shape? And, the nuts/seeds, were they pressed into the slashes or were they folded into the dough at some stage?

Thanks, Sam. Bread porn they are.

On your using semolina, it all depends on why your breads were pale. If it was a result of the presence of flour in shaping and proving, then I suppose using semolina will let the brown-ness show (more). However, paleness due to depleted sugars from overproving, will not 'improve' in colour even if there was no flour to mask it. This is all assuming that it was a bread made from flour, starter, salt, water and was not a sweet rich bread. Just my 2 sen.

sam your breads look fantastic as they are but if you want to try something here is how i get darker look
this only works when i bake on pizza stone btw, without the stone i burn bottom too much
preheat oven to max you can, my oven goes to 250C
spray with water and pop in a oven on the stone
good splash (close to 1 cup) of boiling water at the bottom of my oven
close oven door and first 20-25min leave it on full heat
i find that best colour you get in high temperatures at the start of your bake, if you have pale crust half way while baking there is very little you get out of pushing temperature up
once you get colour you want lower temperature, i find best colour and taste when i bake this way also bread seem to last longer this way, where it still taste great couple days after the bake and it is almost imposible to burn your bread as long as you have stone at the bottom and not too close to the top of your oven (if it is electric with heating element at the top)

Sam,

your loaves look pretty spectacular from my point of view, so don't be disheartened!

It is hard in a domestic oven to get enough steam to achieve the crust colour that you can get with a professional or hearth oven.
My suspicion is that if you could get more steam in your cafe oven you would get a better effect.

I don't know what sort of oven that you are using, but if it is fan-forced, then you could try turning the fan off, or using a trick that I used to use with my fan oven (when I had one)
see http://sourdom.sourdough.net.au/ (go to the post "fan ovens" - for reasons that I don't understand I can't link to it directly)

alternatively - to see what difference steam and radiant heat make - try baking in a pot
for comparison, these were loaves I baked this week
[img]http://www.sourdough.com.au/gallery/d/10501-2/DSCN3181.jpg[/img]
the one on the left was baked in the pot.

THey both have reasonable colour, and in fact the one baked outside the pot is darker, but this reflects more their position in the oven (my current oven is cold at the bottom and hot at the top). But in my oven at least, I can only get the russets and golden tones if I bake in a casserole/pot

cheers
Dom

Hello Sam,
that happens to me sometimes as well. Try using less dusting flour or what I've been doing lately is dusting with fine semolina flour or a mix of white flour and semolina. The coverage is not as absolute and the true colour of your laof may come through. As a bonus, the semolina bakes toasty and nutty.

Tony

I ran into the same problem a while back, however most of my loaves were much closer to being white then your pale brown (probably because I only have used white bread flower). I have “cured” this problem by misting the bread a few times while it’s baking. I am still trying to find out how many times and at what times to mist the bread for the best results (a nice shiny, crispy, golden brown crust), but I currently spray it five times during the first fifteen minutes of baking. I believe the intervals and number of sprayings are different from oven to oven. I have only been baking sour dough for about half a year, so don’t put to much stock in my words.