Hi Caite, a certain amount of deflation is bound to happen when you divide the dough, so I don't think that's what caused the issue you described. Rather, this is likely to be related to dough strength and proofing. Sometimes larger bubbles at the top of the bread can indicate that the dough is a bit over-proofed, which can contribute to the gluten structure beginning to break down. When this happens, the gluten isn't as able to hold the fermentation bubbles in place throughout the loaf, and they end up rising to the top of the loaf and gathering under the crust. This could happen if your dough was on the warmer side or proofed longer than recommended. If this sounds like what happened, you might find that baking the bread a bit earlier (when the bread hasn't risen quite so much) may prove helpful. On the other hand (and just to make things more confusing), if you weren't able to develop sufficient dough strength and under-proofed the loaves, you may see a similar pattern of large holes on top. This would be more likely to happen if your dough was slack and on the cool side. I would focus on developing good dough strength through the folds, be sure to use our bread flour, and try to keep the dough in the 74°F to 76°F range after mixing and throughout the folds and rise times. This will help the timing indicated in the recipe match up with the actual dough progress. 

• Reply