Sourdough Ice Cube Experiment🍞🧊
Where is the redditor who said I shouldn’t use ice cubes?! They were RIGHT 😂🤝🏽
For months now I have been using ice cubes in my loaf pans for “oven spring” because I saw a video of someone doing it.. however, I wanted to test it to see if it was actually making my loaves gummier at the bottom. Turns out it was! I used ice cubes for the loaf on the right (your right) and no ice on the left loaf. As you can see it didn’t crust on the outside bottom corners and stayed softer where the ice cubes were placed. It was slightly gummy in the bottom centre too. I believe the ice cube method only works when you do the Dutch oven method and pre heat the pot, that way when the ice cubes hit the pot you get instant steam. It also had no effect with oven spring in this case.
It was a fun little experiment and I encourage you to change things up and try different methods! 🥰 I am also aware of the tunneling in the second loaf 🥲 that was my bad during the shaping. I accidentally sprinkled too much flour and it didn’t fold how I wanted it to.
🍞Ingredients for 2 loaves –
890g Bread Flour, 112g Wholemeal Flour, 600g Warm Water, 8g Diastatic Malt, 480g Starter, 22g Salt.
Initial mix with everything but salt, let it sit for 40 mins and then add salt. Do 1st stretch and fold. After an hour, take aliquot sample and do 2nd stretch and fold. Do another two or more stretch and folds 30mins apart. Once aliquot is done, pre shape the dough and refrigerate overnight.
Bake on middle rack 240c for 25min lid on, lower rack 220c lid off for 15 -20 mins. Wait 4 hrs until it’s cool before cutting. ✨
by ashbakesstuff
21 Comments
Looks fantastic 🙂
Yo!!!!!!!!! This is amazing!!!! I’ve only made two loaves in my life but you have the elegance that I aspire for!! If you don’t mind, please could you explain about the aliquots? (:
I never heard of the aliquot sample, thank you for exposing me to a new standard practice.
Thanks for doing the work and for the lovely video!
The ice cube is always going to do that in that tiny pan. If you put a rack into the bottom of the pan, it would give the water somewhere to boil.
Even then, a whole ice cube might be too much moisture.
All that said, those are beautiful loaves. 👀
I definitely need to be more gentle during rising.
Such a beautiful elegant handiwork with the dough, I could watch you bake all day!
THE RAMEKIN GIRL IS BACK YAY
Beautiful loaves and great video, well done.
The ice cubes never made sense to me, since you have water already in your dough which causes plenty of steam. The only thing that’s made a difference for me was misting the top of my dough with water, maybe you could try that in a side by side too. I just take a spray bottle of water and heavily mist the top before baking
Beautiful bread and excellent technique folding. Can I ask what tins you use?
Wonderful work! What pans are you using? They look like they seat together really well
Best instructional video I’ve ever seen. Shows everything start to finish with no bs and no filler. Thank you!
It was u/cannontd that suggested skipping the ice.
That was very satisfying to watch.
Wow the whole process and end result is so beautiful when you do it ! I feel like it’s the hot mess express when I’m at it 🤣😂 Thank you for sharing. 👏👏
Checking in!! 🧊❌
I love that you did this experiment, I’ll give it a full watch in the morning.
I learned so much from this video. Thank you. Beautiful.
Yeah…. when you encase the loaf in pans, the moisture escaping stays in there as steam, so the ice cube is not necessary. In fact since you are just leaving it in a cold pan, it will just melt into your loaf and make it gummy as you discovered. If you were dropping the loaf and ice onto a preheated, encased surface, then the ice would become extra steam and possibly actually do something.
Working in commercial kitchens, I would sometimes preheat my oven with a stack of sheet pans in the bottom. I would then drop a pitcher of ice on them as I loaded the bread and shut the door with the fan off for a few minutes. This usually got a pretty decent oven spring.
I abandoned ice cubes a long time ago. I never noticed an improvement in oven spring.
So that’s what that tool is for (the one to mix the dough) hahah I had no idea what to do with it. Love watching you work, I’m going to watch this again and follow along 🙂
The little plastic tub trick is genius