For many people, holes are the holy grail of bread making, and yet those pesky holes can be elusive. There are various techniques you can follow to get the holes in your bread and in this post we will discuss your options.
The five things you need to get holes in your bread include:
1. You need a wet dough to get holes. Wet dough is lighter than dry dough and it moves more easily and more quickly.
2. You need to do the stretch and fold throughout the first rise of the dough. You do this for various reasons, all of which lead to your dough being able to trap big air bubbles in it as it rises. If I want holes in my bread, I stretch and fold the dough every 60 minutes or so during the bulk fermentation of a sourdough bread and every 30 minutes or so during the bulk fermentation of a bread with added yeast. Depending on the sourdough bread I am making, the first rise may be as few as four hours or as many as eight. I let my “yeast” dough rise for 2-4 hours. Set a timer to remind you when it is time to do your stretch and fold. To see how to stretch and fold, have a look in the Video section of the site.
3. You need to do the final shape of your dough gently so that you don’t squish out all the wonderful air holes that have been forming. Scrape the dough out of the bowl gently and lovingly onto the counter. Stretch and fold it one last time before giving the dough its final shape. Be gentle when you are working the dough into its final shape for its final rise.
4. You need to use a flour that has a lot of stretchy gluten. This limits you to white wheat or spelt flour, and that’s about it. White emmer, einkorn or kamut may work as well too, depending on where they are grown, how much stretchy gluten they have, and how they are milled. However, too much whole meal, rye, or other kinds of flour whether or not they have gluten and you simply do not have the raw material you need to get bread with holes.
5. Too much “filling” whether it’s nuts, fruit or seeds will weight down the dough making it harder to get holes. An open crumb, yes. Big uneven holes, not really.
Other things to consider
- You do not need to proof or bake your bread in a form to get holes. Bread like ciabatta or baguettes are neither proofed nor baked in a form, traditionally. On the other hand, if you would like to proof and/or bake your bread in a form you can. Using a form will neither help you nor hinder you in achieving your holes. If your dough is too dry and/or you cannot resist degassing it by punching it back you will probably not get holes, no matter what you do.
- You can use either high or low protein flour but beware flour from different countries does behave differently. Neither Italian nor French flour is particularly high in protein but French flour, for example, is more “enzymatic” than English flour. Most types of French and Italian bread are flatter than big, huge round loaves that have been proofed in a basket, but that does not mean they are less holey. So, if you only have access to lower protein flour you need not despair – simply adapt the final look of the loaf and give up trying to get something huge. There may simply not enough gluten for that. Shape baguettes, ciabatta, pane genzano or a host of other kinds of flatter bread instead.
The holes, therefore, are neither a function of equipment nor purely of the level of gluten in your flour. However, they are a function of ingredients, hydration, practice and patience.
