Originally Posted by
BamaVol
The recipe guideline is 40 minutes so your advice is sound. I like the idea of cutting the heat and cracking the oven door. Do you have a suggestion for time on half loaves? I was thinking of 5 minutes less. I’ll thump them but I’m not all that confident about what hollow will sound like.
5 minutes less is typically what I've used for smaller loaves, and so far, it has worked (10-15 minutes for the initial spring, 20 minutes for the bake). I had one which was a bit underdone in the middle back when I first started ramping up baking, but leaving the loaf parked in a warm oven for another 10 minutes or so solved that without burning the crust. What I typically do is toss the "finished" loaf into the upper oven compartment while I ramp the heat back up to 500 on my lower (convection) oven; I don't even have to run the upper oven, as it's fairly warm just from running the one under it.
And I agree that the sound is tough to go by and that I worry I'm into overdone territory by the time I get what I consider a hollow sound.