Liquified bread crumb
I have often asked myself what the inside of fermenting bread dough would look like in quick motion or 3D. In a recent post I cited a research group at AACC, that has done a careful analysis of the crumb development of dough, employing Magnetic Resonance Imaging. But even they are limited to making virtual cuts and looking at cross sections.
After adding filters to my latest shot of a sourdough-bread crumb, using Photoshop, I was presented with an unappetizing view. The detail level of the unaltered image was high (I was surprised by my own camera); you can see some big holes, but also small and tiny ones, which give the crumb its spongy character.
This question remains though: How do the big holes develop during fermentation? A wild guess: The expansion of gas ruptures the walls of adjecent gas cells, forming a bigger hole. The torn walls stick together with others and constitute the bigger hole. And so forth. Maybe the acidity of sourdough helps to attack the gluten structure making these ruptures more likely to happen. However, sourdough is not a prerequisite for the formation of big holes, as experiments with quick doughs, conducted by a hungry me, have shown.
Yuck!
