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Snap Crackle Pop


NeroW

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I just made 2 baguettes (I am happy to report that my baguettes no longer look like they were made by monkeys).

When I pulled them out of the oven and cooled them (on my upside-down dish rack :rolleyes: ) they made little popping sounds.

What is that?

Noise is music. All else is food.

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Simple physics. When you take the loaf out of the oven, the temperature of the loaf drops. As the temperature drops, the air in the bubbles in your bread contracts, producing a slight inward-pull on the crust of the loaf from the inside, as the loaf shrinks slightly.

If your loaf is of a thinly-crusted variety, the rigid crust gives way at various points due to this pull. Each little crack is audible. :)

In essence, it's the exact parallel of the process whereby your crust sometimes cracks when you put your proved loaf in in the oven, just due to negative not positive pressure.

Congratulations on your non-simian baguettes. :)

Edited by culinary bear (log)

Allan Brown

"If you're a chef on a salary, there's usually a very good reason. Never, ever, work out your hourly rate."

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That, my friend, is the sound of happy bread, "singing" gloriously about becoming a baguette.

I'm sure there's a more technical answer to follow, involving the maillard reaction and rapidly cooling starches, gelatinization, etc.

But in the meantime, enjoy the music.

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nyc, you make science sound so, so, so... unenjoyable. :)

Perhaps we call the sound "The Passionate Embrace of Glutenin and Gliadin"?

I think it's a bit of both.... :)

Allan Brown

"If you're a chef on a salary, there's usually a very good reason. Never, ever, work out your hourly rate."

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Allan,

You say simple physics. I say sensory symphony.

I say Potato. You say passionate embrace of glutenin and gliadin.

It's all rock and roll to me.

Thanks for making science so accessible.

nyc

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Thanks! I could've dug out the McGee to answer my own question, but there is nothing like "The Passionate Embrace of Glutenin and Gliadin" in there.

Noise is music. All else is food.

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years ago when i worked at a bakery in phila. we were knocking out large amounts of baguettes. We could get them in the oven pretty fast so they would be done in a similar rotation. we'd be unloading 100 to 150 baguettes at a time and a few minutes after unloading, all the crackling made it sound like it was POURING rain outside. That never got boring.

...and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce it tastes alot more like prunes than rhubarb does. groucho

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