For a few years now I’ve seen some bakers on Instagram score their dough twice: just before baking as is customary and again after 5-7 minutes of baking, cutting the same line a second time. This occurs after the initial steaming period, but before the crust hardens too much for the blade to slip. The lid remains open for less than a minute before cooking continues. This new scoring of the dough is intended to encourage greater opening or “blooming” of the scoring by recreating an area of weakness for the dough to pass through. The goal is usually to protect the smaller, more detailed cuts from tearing and to encourage a larger, airier loaf, in theory.
I designed this experiment to see the impact of scoring once or twice on the bloom of the incision, the shape of the bread and the crumb of two identical doughs. To make the experiment more fun, the two doughs are a spiral combination of plain dough and blue butterfly pea flower dough. [Here is the recipe if you want to try it ➡ Butterfly Pea Flower Swirl Sourdough Bread.] I combined and layered the white and blue doughs after the bulk fermentation. The loaves were shaped, leavened and baked under identical conditions, with the exception of the re-scoring of one of the doughs (always on the left). The blade had an angle of 30-45° throughout the rifling.
Marked twice: central area slightly more open
The first five minutes of cooking are generally considered the most important for steam. I removed the lid from the “carved once” dough to ensure it had the same conditions as the “twice carved” dough, but I probably should have left the lid on to show the typical process. I’m fairly certain, however, that this blowing off steam didn’t have much of an impact. Also, the “carved once” dough was the first dough I loaded into the oven, so by the time the lids came off it had cooked about two minutes longer than the “carved twice” dough.
Scored twice: flatter and wider
Results
By kneading the dough you get a wider and flatter loaf, with a perhaps slightly more open crumb. This loaf also had more slice size consistency from end to end. The usual approach to scoring once just before baking resulted in a taller, narrower loaf with more tapered slices towards the ends of the loaf.
As noted, the minimal difference was barely significant, so unless you have a very detailed score that you’re trying to protect with a reinforced wide cut, the decision to add this additional scoring step at the 5-7 minute mark is a question of preference. due to the shape of the bread and the complexity of the process.
