Just realized my loaf was gummy because I was cutting it hot, took me 4 bakes to figure that out
Kept blaming my oven and bought a $30 thermometer for nothing when the real issue was slicing into it 5 minutes out of the pan. Anyone else ruin a whole loaf just from being impatient?
The crumb keeps cooking from the inside heat for a while after it leaves the oven, so cutting early is kind of like pulling a steak off the grill and slicing it right away. What got me was the steam. If you let it sit in the pan those first few minutes, all that moisture has nowhere to go and it soaks right back into the bottom crust. I started moving mine to a rack after 10 minutes and waiting a full hour, and the gumminess just stopped.