February 23, 2010 - 8:50pm
Lumps in dough?
Hi. I'm pretty new to bread baking, but this hasn't happened in the last few weeks. I am making this challah bread: http://www.finecooking.com/recipes/challah.aspx
Anyway, I've done all the steps and I kneaded my dough, but I've ended up with tiny little lumps over the entirety of the dough. I mixed all of the other non-flour ingredients together while the 'starter' was waiting, so could something have congealed? Is it the flour put in the autolyse because there has been a different level of absorption? It feels like goosebumps (and they lumps are about that size) all over my dough.
I have no clue what happened. And i have no clue if rising, shaping, proofing and baking will get rid of those lumps.
Any help would be appreciated! Thanks!
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The recipe doesn't call out an autolyse and only has 1/4 cup of water which is mixed with 1/2 cup flour and yeast to make a sponge (a term which is correctly used in the recipe itself). So I'm not so sure why you are talking about an autolyse.
Sponges are used to give a little extra flavor to enriched breads such as this. It is an old technique and a useful one.
Mixing the oil, eggs, sugar, salt and honey together could be somewhat problematic as an old method for cleaning up an egg dropped on the floor was to sprinkle salt on it - which would dry up the egg white. But it does take a lot of salt (learned that the hard way) to do this and I'm not sure that would occur with these proportions and with oil and honey present.
Adding the wet ingredients to the sponge might make a somewhat lumpy batter, but once the flour is mixed in this should smooth out. Of course, you should have mixed the sponge/wet ingredients/salt well enough so that they were thoroughly combined - then added flour.
If you used another mixing method and created lumps in the flour itself (for example mixed the wet ingredients into the flour - not the sponge, or didn't thoroughly mix the other ingredients into the sponge before adding the flour) I'm afraid those lumps are here to stay. What you would have done is to create little lumps of flour/liquid that will never come apart. This is an all too common result from trying to improvise an autolyse and not putting enough liquid in it.
This does seem like a very stiff dough - but the recipe authors keep telling you to make it stiff.
You may wish to carefully retrace your steps and carefully read the recipe directions to see where you went astray. You might also check the volume of your eggs as they are a very large source of moisture in this loaf - so using small eggs instead of large could really throw the thing off (PS - that's why we are all so enamored of weight measurments on this board...)
I would encourage you not to try the autolyse technique in doughs where the primary hydrating ingredient is anything but water. Certainly not in this recipe.
Hope this helps.
Did you happen to use Active dry yeast?
I did use active dry yeast, but I dissolved it int he water first.
and I have a theory. I add salt and levain after autolyse completes. I think the tiny lumps are gluten strands that have tightened locally around the salt crystals. However, ultimately, kneading, French folding, or Stretch & Folds take them out of my doughs.
David G.