Well here goes, I did an experiment with a loaf baked starting with a cold oven and a hot baked loaf after the oven was heated up. Here is the first pic of the bottom of the loaves. The one on the left is the cold start the one on the right is the hot baked. The cold start bottom was stuck to the stone and had to be carved off, it was white, cracked and soft, also it caved in somewhat. It is also slightly larger because it spread out more than it jumped up.
[img]http://www.sourdough.com.au/gallery/d/3720-1/coldstart1.jpg[/img]
Here is the side view of the coldstart vs hot baked:
[img]http://www.sourdough.com.au/gallery/d/3723-2/coldstart2.jpg[/img]
Here is a picture of the interior crumb:
[img]http://www.sourdough.com.au/gallery/d/3726-2/coldstart4.jpg[/img]
Here is a picture of the two on the outside. forgot to take a picture before cuttin them, so the other side that you can't see is cut, making them look shorter than they actually were.
[img]http://www.sourdough.com.au/gallery/d/3728-1/coldstart5.jpg[/img]
The bread that was coldstart baked took about 10 minutes longer to bake and had blisters on top and a disappointing crust on the bottom. I believe that I actually underproofed both of the loaves. They both cracked their crust and you can see with the interior pictures, that the crumb was somewhat dense. However the hot baked loaf's crust was awesome! Crisp, crunchy and sour! Have a nice day!
northwestsourdough.com
Replies
Back in the days when I used commercial yeast I had a recipe that was a cold start. Tremendous oven rise, but I think that was due to the nature of commercial yeast, and the crumb was full of tiny holes. No good taste to speak of but it did make good toast.
Long live sourdough.
Teresa,
your loaves look great, and it is interesting to see the difference between them. It is not so surprising that the oven spring was less with a cold oven.
I may have caused confusion when I suggested to 'bake from cold' in a previous post. I had meant that I would sometimes bake the dough from the fridge (without allowing the dough to warm up). I have always heated the oven up first. I have seen recipes that (as Bill suggests) direct you to put the loaf in the cold oven and turn it on, but have never tried that.
cheers
Dom
No It wasn't your fault or anything like that, I just wanted to experiment, and thought people would be interested. I think what happened was really interesting and am always coming up with new ideas. I like to see your neat ideas too and you certainly have some! I thought your bread from your starter experiments was wonderful! thanks,Teresa