Crust

Crust is the loaf's exterior after the Baking the loaf: dehydrated surface, browned, thin or thick depending on dough, steam, and time. King Arthur Baking: early Steam gelatinizes starches on the outside into a glossy, shatter-y finish; a dry finish lets that skin firm ¹. Calvel treats crust as an oven result, not a topping ².

Hearth bread exposes more surface, so steam and dry-down matter more than they do on a pan loaf. The interior is Crumb; do not describe both as "texture."

Wet, then dry #

Keep the skin flexible through Oven spring, then vent — King Arthur's covered-pot and steam-pan cue is about twenty minutes ¹. Steam the whole bake and the crust stays pale and soft. No steam and it sets dull and tight while the loaf is still trying to rise.

Color is not only oven time. Intensive mixing can bleach flour pigments; Calvel's autolyse teaching, as King Arthur recounts it, was partly a fight against that white, over-oxidized crumb and the flavor that went with it ³. A pale loaf can be underbaked, under-steamed, or over-mixed. A black loaf is burnt sugar, not "extra caramelization" as a virtue.

On the Cooling rack the crust should crackle as it loses Water. Wrapped hot, it steams itself limp.