This is a continuation of Part 2: Experimenting with Bread Dough Process.

I had mentioned I wanted to try adding a longer primary fermentation, a so-called “preferment” or “pre-ferment”. The first one I tried was a simplistic poolish using my typical bread formula and flour amounts. The second batch used too little yeast, and it didn’t rise very well.

The first poolish batch turned into very nice bread, bread that was accidentally ruined after it had been bagged in plastic, ready for slicing the following day and stored in the oven, when I forgot it was there and started warming up the oven for something else. The oven was somewhat over 200F when I remembered the two loaves there, but the plastic had shrunk itself around those loaves. I decided to compost that batch, as I figured that plastic fumes had saturated through the bread.

I wasn’t enthralled with the poolish process, however, because it was more complicated to make, it involved more weighing of ingredients and separate processes (particularly if I had to separately autolyse each), as well it didn’t seem to provide much advantage over the straight dough approach I’d been using judging by the results (but it was and is easy to mix). More work for the same result? That’s when I realized that the poolish methods didn’t autolyse all the flour, at least not a strict autolyse.

So I started wondering if I could autolyse all the flour much the same as the straight-dough process I’d been using, then turn some or all of that dough into a long fermentation that occurred prior to the typical overnight bulk refrigeration. Flipping the question around, it seemed easy enough to simply add a long fermentation step between the straight-dough autolyse and the typical, retarded or refrigerated overnight fermentation. Additionally, I realized that with an additional fermentation step, I could add the salt and oil immediately prior to the secondary or bulk fermentation, and not need to do much kneading the next morning before division and panning for the final proof: there would be nothing that needed to be mixed into the dough at that point in the process.

I had originally hoped the long fermentation would take 8-hours at 72F (winter room temperatures here), but it had tripled in bulk at 4.5 hours due to the 0.15% Instant Dry Yeast added to it at that point-in-time. I’ll have to reduce that amount the next time for a longer fermentation, as the schedule allows an 8-hour primary ferment without needing a third day. For reasons of simplicity of process, I opted to subject all the autolysed flour to this long fermentation at 55% water (only flour, water, vinegar, and yeast added to the dough at this point).

First, a warm autolyse of only flour and water that resulted in 100F degree dough, which was placed in the refrigerator for 1.5 hours, at which point it cooled to about 83F degrees. Then the vinegar was added and kneaded, then a small amount of yeast for the long primary fermentation was added, and this mix was returned to the refrigerator for another 1/2 hour or so, until the dough cooled to 70F, when it was removed to room temperature. This rose for the next 4 hours at room temperature (72F) for a total of 4.5 hours. Because the dough had tripled in volume, I thought that was enough, but my guess is it would still be considered immature. At this point, more yeast was added, a short knead of a minute or so followed by a 10 minute rest, then salt was added and kneaded, then oil was added and separately kneaded with 1/3 of the dough using the prior-mentioned food-processor blade technique, then reincorporated and all of it stand-mixer kneaded for another minute on the slowest speed. The dough was 79F when it entered the refrigerator for the overnight bulk or second fermentation.

This dough process seems to result in the nicest and softest crumb yet, and the crust is a somewhat darker golden color. The crust was slightly tough following baking, but as toast it’s wonderfully crisp:

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This is a continuation of my prior post title Experimenting with Bread Dough Process. Apparently, when my updated posts become too long, with too many words, there are times when text gets lost on an update, so I’ll have to come up with a different titling scheme and give up on the idea of continuing to add content to existing posts. For now, this will be Part Two. As with the prior post in this series, the dates below were snipped from the prior post, and is why they are earlier than the date of this post.

2009.Aug.14

I feel like I found the mother load of information about enzymes, and as I was reading through the commercial report from an apparent enzyme manufacturer (PDF), I found these two paragraphs that may explain the increased stickiness (I may have gone overboard with my chosen emphasis):

Glutenin can be classed as a heterogenous mixture of proteins. It has a molecular weight of 100,000 to several million. It is a multiple chain protein with crosslinked intermolecular disulfide bonds. It has moderate adhesiveness and high elasticity….

Gliadin is considered a heterogeneous mixture of prolamines with a molecular weight of 25- 60,000. It is a single chain protein containing intramolecular disulfide bonds. It has high adhesiveness and low elasticity.

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This is a continuation of my prior post titled Experimenting With Bread Dough Moisture, Sandwich Slices, and Oven Spring. I kept adding text to that post at the bottom, but due to some errors of unknown origin, the frequently re-saved post started losing large sections of text. At some point while investigating the issue, I found that shorter posts worked fine as a workaround.

The continuation here was of text snipped from the bottom of that post, and is why the date of this post is later than some of the entries.

2009.Jul.27

Massive volume increase! Wow! This was the first dough I’ve made that passed the windowpane test without tearing before light was visible through the stretched dough.

I diverged from the scientific process of making only one change at a time, so some of the results cannot easily be traced to particular changes made. The following batch used a strictly-defined autolyse rest, and the fermentation was similar to a sponge as well as a biga, but it uses 100% of the formula’s flour, thus cannot be called either.

The major change made in this batch was one of process, or the order in which various ingredients were added. The following ingredient list or formula is not reflective of that order.

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A long time ago I posted one of my bread recipes, honey wheat berry bread, a clone of a bread I sometimes like. That was a time of increased interest and study regarding bread dough, and I posted much of what I learned in the comment section of that post. The Internet really opened up the information available to average folks! Much gratitude to the computer and Internet architects, and to all the folks who’ve added their knowledge!

Unfortunately, study and reading can take one only so far, sometimes you have to actually do it to learn more. So, after getting a scale to weigh ingredients, a vast improvement in the consistency of batch-to-batch results occurred, but then more questions arose.

I decided to increase the moisture of the white bread recipe that I use for toast and sandwich slices from 51% to 53%, where the water weight is expressed as percentage of flour weight, and further, this percentage doesn’t include all the water, as vinegar presumably is mostly water. Some may prefer to conceive of this 51–53% change as a 53.35–55.35%, or imprecisely by rounding to zero decimals, 53–55% change. The recipe is given below for further analysis. For a number of years I have put some amount of vinegar in my breads because I’ve noted the bread takes longer to stale when it has this ingredient added, or restating, gives it a longer shelf life, and I’ve never been able to taste it, so I see no downside to doing so.

As it happens, I ended up rising and baking this batch on a rainy and somewhat colder day, the rise took longer (around 5 hours) than it typically does on a warmer day (3.5-4 hours). I’m not sure how much of this change is related to the dough’s moisture change. (We get so little rain in Southern California, I decided to take an umbrella for a walk while I waited the extra time. Thank you Gaia, I love your rain!)

I prefer the french-bread taste of sandwich-style white bread made from dough that has aged in the refrigerator overnight, this isn’t done so much for the yeast to have a slower rise (though that is an effect), it is said to break down some of the carbohydrates differently, and the results are both tasted in an altered flavor, and seen as a slightly different color of crust in the baked product.

I rise the refrigerator-temperature dough in the pans it will be baked in, in the same room temperature oven in which it will later be baked. Because the oven is not humidified without the addition of heat, the weighed and pre-shaped dough pieces, before they’re put in the pans, are smeared with oil, and so too are the pans. This prevents a skin from forming during the rise in the absence of a humidified and temperature-controlled rising chamber, as well as providing a release agent for easing the removal of the baked loaves from their pans.

It seems one trick is to be patient with the rise, however, with this 53% moisture dough, I was quite surprised with how much it rose during the initial portion of baking, sometimes referred to as oven spring.

For each loaf, the dough weighed approximately 1300-1400 grams (which is 1.3-1.4 kilograms), this provides a nicely-sized sandwich slice that really is larger than a typical soda cracker! It takes 1 hour, 35 minutes of baking to reach 199F internal temperature, in a thermostat-reported 300F degree oven, and this includes our oven’s warm-up time. Higher baking temperatures seem to result in a crust that is too dark and thick for my sandwich-slice preferences, at least when baking these rather large loaves. (more…)