Before baking some people like to take their bread out of the fridge and leave it at room temperature for a while. I don’t tend to do this unless I have misjudged the DDT or the bulk timing I like to take mine straight from the fridge. When I’ve experimented with this, I’ve found that straight from the fridge gets me a better oven spring.
Scoring allows us to control how the loaf expands during the oven spring. This is a huge issue, because there are so many mistakes people make with scoring… it’s the easiest and the hardest thing to do. First off, make sure your blade is very sharp and don’t put any pressure on the dough as you score. It needs just a very light touch, because at this stage the dough is delicate. And there’s no sawing motion either. Just a gentle, swift movement over the top. To allow the bread to rise and have an ear on it, hold the blade at a 45o angle to the surface of the dough.
The scoring pattern and where you score on the loaf affects the way the bread rises. Often you are better off cutting to the side rather than the centre of the surface of the loaf. I tend to stick to three curves on a boule, and one long curved score on the left or right hand side of an oval shaped loaf.
Once the loaf has been scored, get it into the oven as quickly as possible.
