The other day, I was invited to some fancy dinner (wish it happened more often) and in their basket of bread rolls, there was one roll which has a very dark crust, deep dark brown; the slashes revealed a white crumb. A very dramatic look. Would appreciate some pointers on how to get crust that colour. Thanks!
Best
TP
Best
TP
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Jeremy
TP
in this case could be a reflection of residual sugars - not necessarily sucrose, but could include maltose etc - in the dough piece at the time of entering the oven. Why is there higher residual sugar at this point, there could be for a number of reassons. But I guess it may be interesting to discover whether it was intentional or accidental. If the former then you can emulate this quite easily, if the latter, you could also emulate this but it may also be at the expense of other qualities until you get it worked ou as it'll involve some trial and error.
Accidents have a funny habbit of being adopted and becoming intentional as they often take us into methods and qualities we otherwise wouldn't use or go with.
I've got to go, but if you like, I'll post some of the underlying causes later when I get a chance.
Will try painting my next loaf with some sugar solution.
TP
but is that how you believe the rich crust colour was achieved? I never would have thought of that first. I've never done that to rolls or bread. Was the crust sweet to taste or was it sweet all through?
You can also increase the sugar content of the dough by increasing the diastatic malt. Or you could add raw sugar to the dough. Of course, the details of this all depends on what type of dough you're making, sourdough, yeast sponge and dough, yeast fermented dough. Too much sugar, and it'll give rise to a raft of other problems.
Good luck.
The bread wasn't sweet....just a tinge. If anything, I'd say it was too salty. It wasn't that the taste was great, I just liked the look. If I can get ahold of some diastatic malt, I'll try it. Anyway, I'll keep this thread posted if and when I come up with anything which looks like it. I'm thinking it may not be a high sugar content in the dough, as, like I said, only the crust (thin) is brown to the point of being almost black. The open slashes are completely white.
Thanks, Boris, for helping me to solve this puzzle.
Edit to add: ....but would anyone go to the trouble of painting a bread to get such an effect? Hmm....I think what you suggested makes more sense.
of the crust with the colour intensity sounds like sugar content. It may not be sufficient to make the roll sweet but influence the colour intensity and crust thinness none the less. For example, aside from the problems of baking with a flour that has a high 'maltose figure' one of the results in the final loaf is a high crust colour, and to avoid having a the crust too dark I often see the loaf withdrawn from the oven early which results in a thin crust.
Anyway, good luck and keep us posted.
when i was experimenting with things i noticed that very hot oven during my bake gives me really nice dark (but not burnt) crust.
trying to darken my next bakes by pushing temperature up at the end of bake would not give such nice deep dark colour.
but this comes with quite big crust, its not thick but not the thinnest out there at the same time rolls always show colour a lot faster so that might give thin and dark crust at once.
just make sure you watch it, once it start showing colour it goes very dark very fast, you want to drop temperature before it turns black.
This might be of interest, though not just for the crust colour. A French baker friend of mine recently asked the following via email:
"Going on your web-site, I was watching some pictures and I would like to ask you if this bread contains some cuttlefish ink (it is really black on the photo). Whatever, it looks really under-proof or/and made with a really stiff dough."
Has anyone else heard of cuttlefish ink in bread? Forgive me. Adding sea creatures to dough was not included in my training.
More Photos: http://sourdough.com.au/?q=gallery&g2_itemId=5239
Jeremy
http://www.viniferaforlife.com/