Test: trying to get a taller dough

I am far from baking bread that I am 100% happy with. I am just starting to bake bread, so there’s a lot to learn.

One of the things that annoys me the most is that I see people are getting to make round-ish loaves that are very tall. My dough doesn’t rise that high, and I don’t know the cause yet. Is it my Benetton that spreads the dough too much when it’s taken out of it?

So I asked this on a Facebook group, and following one link after another I got to watch this video and decided to try some of his tips. But what people on the group seemed to agree on was that one needs to focus on creating tension on the dough at the pre-shaping and at the shaping stages. I clearly didn’t put enough focus there.

So I decided this time to go crazy and make a test just to see if I could achieve a dough that was rounder and taller. I shot a bit high on the hydration and went for 75%, which was probably too much since the dough was 90% made of white flour.

Ingredients:

• 300g pre-ferment (150g of Pivetti tipo 1 farina)
• 100g Regal spelt
• 150g Pivetti Manitoba flour
• 50g Møllerens rye
• 50g whole wheat
• 10g salt (too much)
• 235g water

Things I did different this time:

• I did wait the pre-ferment to peak its height.
• I did one stretch-and-fold every 15 minutes. The dough was too hydrated, so I wasn’t going to end up with a firm, perfectly shaped ball, but it was nice.
• I REALLY worked on pulling the edges on pre-shaping to create as much tension as possible.

It seemed it got me on the right path: while I didn’t achieve my goal just yet, it seems to be on the right way, as I never got a bread that high, specially when shaping it like a batard. But I still have to work better on this. Next steps are to reduce the hydration when making white bread and to work on the batard tension. I guess I’ve been too afraid of stretching the dough too much when shaping it.

Overall, great, amazing, best-I’ve-seen-so-far crumb: