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Scoring whole grain bread: is it necessary?
Published 4 months ago • 3 min read
Scoring whole grain bread: is it necessary?
Whole wheat sourdough olive bread with simple score marks
Scoring is the process of cutting slits into the top of a loaf to control where it will burst during oven spring.
When people baked in large communal village ovens, the way to easily tell one family’s loaves apart from another's was by the score marks – in those circumstances it was important for that reason.
Some bakers will absolutely insist on scoring every single loaf. Other bakers never score their loaves.
If you are working with lower hydration doughs using a lot of white flour, scoring can be an important step to direct the bursting effects of the oven spring to the right place. 100% whole grain loaves don’t get quite the same amount of oven spring, so scoring is not as important as it is for white flour loaves, but there are still times when scoring might be a good idea.
When scoring might help
•If you are working with a low hydration dough.
•If your dough has not risen much during proofing and you want to encourage it to spring up in the oven as much as possible.
•If you want to create pretty designs.
•If the room humidity is low and a skin has formed on top of your pan loaf.
When scoring is not a good idea
•If your dough is very high in hydration.
•If your dough has overproofed.
•If you’d prefer random cracks in the crust rather than neat lines.
•If you don’t want to mess around with hot dutch ovens or open oven doors any longer than you have to.
How to score a loaf
The time for scoring is right before you put the loaf in the oven. Make sure you have everything ready so that you can quickly transfer the loaf to the oven as soon as it’s scored.
For dutch oven loaves, this will involve having your scoring knife, proofing bowl, and some spare bench space ready. Quickly remove the dutch oven from the oven, remove the lid, put your bread into it, quickly score, then replace the lid and put it back in the oven.
For loaves baked on a pizza stone, you can either slide the oven rack with the stone on it slightly out of the oven and invert your loaf onto it, or you can leave the oven door shut, place your loaf on a sheet of parchment paper on top of a pizza peel or inverted cookie sheet, score your loaf, and then open the door and slide it onto the stone.
Use either a very sharp razor blade or a serrated knife. Work quickly and confidently to make slashes diagonally (or near horizontally) into the dough. Do this right before baking, around 1⁄2” deep.
Scoring the top of a loaf with a steak knife is my preferred method
If you are working with open oven doors or hot dutch ovens, it’s important to score as quickly as possible. Every second you waste trying to create a pretty design means a lower starting temperature for your bread.
A simple slash or two is fine. For boules like the one above, I tend to just do four quick slashes to form a rough square shape - sometimes it looks neater than others, but however it looks, the bread always tastes good.
An alternative to scoring
Some bakers will proof their loaves seam-side down, so that when they flip the loaf onto the dutch oven or hearth, it will burst in an organic (but still slightly controlled) way along the lines of the seam. This can be a good approach if you are concerned that the loaf will burst in unwanted places, or if the loaf you’re making might benefit from scoring but you don’t want the hassle of an extra step, or if you don’t have the right kind of blade.
My approach to scoring
I rarely score my loaves. Sometimes if I think a loaf would benefit from scoring, I use a serrated steak knife to score, as I don’t like the idea of having razor blades in my family kitchen. Razor blades used for scoring bread also get blunt easily and then need to be replaced, so the serrated knife is always my first choice. I have also just used a regular (very sharp) kitchen knife to score and that worked reasonably well.
May your loaves rise high. Floury regards,
Kate
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Weekly sourdough recipes and tips from an experienced baker and homesteader, with a focus on fresh milled flour and whole grains. Subscribe today to get a free eBook of sourdough discard recipes.
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