Crumb

If you ever bake a not-so-perfect loaf of sourdough bread, cut the bread in half, straight down the middle, so that you can inspect your crumb (the inner texture of your sourdough bread –characterized by the size, shape, and distribution of the holes).

Your crumb gives you insight on how your fermentation went. And since fermentation is what you really want to get right, it’d be good to take a closer look. I call this the bread autopsy –because if you think about it, that’s exactly what we are doing.

A tight crumb refers to sourdough bread with small, evenly distributed holes, while an open crumb has larger, more irregular holes.

The crumbs in this slideshow will give you a good idea on what it means when your bread’s crumb looks like this: