I finally figured out why my sourdough was always flat

I've been baking sourdough for about 8 months now and kept getting loaves that spread out instead of rising up. Last week I went to a bakery in Portland called Tabor Bread and watched the baker there work. She noticed I was shaping my dough way too aggressively and knocking all the gas out. She told me to treat the dough like it's fragile and use a bench scraper for tension instead of my hands. I tried it at home the next day and got my first real ear on a loaf. The difference was night and day honestly. Has anyone else had a shaping breakthrough that fixed their bread?

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2 Comments

mason.mary4mo ago

Watched a guy on YouTube who shapes his dough with like a credit card instead of floury hands, works way better. @singh.blair is right though, pushing too hard on anything just makes it fight back.

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singh.blair4mo ago

That baker at Tabor Bread sounds like a genius honestly. I've noticed this pattern everywhere, not just in bread. When you try too hard to control something you end up breaking it. Like in my job I fix servers for a living, and I had a coworker who would crank down every screw on a hard drive mount till it stripped. You gotta know when to stop pushing and just let things sit. Same with relationships too. You chase a friend too hard and they pull away. But if you back off and just be chill, they come around. Bread's no different. That gentle touch she taught you is basically the secret to half the stuff in life nobody tells you about.

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