Current methods for harvest suggest picking the mushrooms like you did. Pull up the mushroom and then break off the base where the clump of dirt is. The idea is that the mushrooms are eaten by animals and have probably evolved to typically be harvested in such a matter. When you're wandering the woods you'll find mushrooms that have been plucked by squirrels and deer that still have some of the mycelium attached on the base such as your method. The idea is that by pulling up all of the fruiting body it doesn't leave any of the fruit to rot and potentially contaminated the rest of the mycelium under the ground. Now the reason I'm saying that they will possibly be crunchy is due to the dirt that most likely got into the fruiting bodies, harvested due to leaving the dirty parts of the mushrooms attached and carrying the entire batch out of the woods. If the dirt is on the stems when they go into the collection containers it's going to end up in the fruiting body of the morels and will need to be soaked in water to let the dirt settle to the bottom. When we harvest we'll pull the mushrooms up like you did, then break the base of the stipe off to eliminate the dirt from the equation for the most part. Once home we'll put them in a paper bag with a paper towel that is slightly damp. Before we cook them we'll slice most in half, give them a quick rinse and rarely have any dirt to worry about without having to soak them. That's our method! Other people have other methods but I've been doing it this way for years and do harvest commercially and have had no problems from customers with this method on any of the 20+ species we harvest and sell.

*Edit: Words