"Old Dough" vs. Natural Levain

Spectacular either way around it! Nice Bread.

Cheers,

Wingnut

What you call "Old Dough" is more generally referred to as pate fermentee.  It is type of preferment where a bit of dough from a mix is reserved for use the next day with a newly mixed dough.  Usually it accounts for no more than 15% of the new dough being mixed.

But it is not intended to be the primary leavening for the newly mixed dough.  Instead, it's used much like a poolish or biga - augmented with bakers yeast.  In other words, it's not meant to be a substitute for bakers yeast in the way that a levain is.

I'm surprised you got such good results.  I suspect the extended fermentation period through retardation allowed the yeast in the pate fermentee to fully leaven your dough.

Thanks for sharing,

Larry

You nailed the oven temperature, steam and time, from all appearances.  That glossy crumb is a dead giveaway of a well-baked loaf.  Good work!

And thanks for the comparison of the two methods.

Paul

Very interesting, thank you for your great contribution to dough theory. 

 I use a small pinch of my old dough all the time to kick off a new levain for a batch of bread. I have found I can bake bread regularly using One less moving part. Sometimes less than a pinch. 

Again, well done!

Thanks for doing the test, David. Very informative.

David, and great loaves. To me the equation acidic => gummy crumb finds more and more confirmations every time I bake.

Both loaves turned out very nice, David.

After reading all the posts here I have a few questions, though:

According to Wally, "old dough" is the same as "pâté fermentée". In my understanding, "old dough" is a piece of dough taken from the dough after the bulk rise, including all ingredients of that special kind of bread, not only flour, water, yeast and salt, but possibly also fat, sweetener and spices. Pâté fermentée, on the other hand, is a pre-ferment, made of flour, water, yeast and salt, and not a piece of another bread in process.

Is 1 day old dough really "old dough"? How does taste and performance change with age? When I started out baking my own bread, I always kept a 3/4 cup of the dough for the next loaf, baked after a week or two. That was all all the leaven it needed to rise. I took this procedure from a French cookbook, and it worked just fine.

Right now I'm baking rolls with old dough, and try to figure out differences in taste, depending on the age of the dough, with a tad of commercial yeast added.

German Bauernbrötchen with medium rye, made with (2-months-) old dough.

Thanks to this experiment the results are clear: No difference. 

How the yeast are introduced to the flour makes no nevermind, what matters is the inocculation quantity and how you subsequently age it.  You can get the flu shot in your arm or you can take it via a nasal spray or orally, both ways work. These old dough, poolish, biga, mother, etc, arguments can be put to rest with this experiment, executed apparently with labratory like precision.

All you need is a pinch to colonize, then you start your 100%, 50%, 33 1/3% whatever % you want, baby. The Time/Temperature/Percentage continuum cares not. If you are after a more acid taste, make your bread with a big percentage of old dough. For sweeter bread, keep the dough fresh.

Paul is right the gloss of the crumb says it all.

I love your experiment too.  I like the idea of adding a day of SD age to the bread so it tastes like day two on day one.  What you are doing is exactly what commercial bakers used to do before the invention commercial yeast to make all the bread they produced.  Today, as Larry and Andy note they might use up to 15% of old dough, probably less,  for the next days bake flavor and they add instant yeast when mixing to boost the rise and shorten the time.  This is more economical too as it reduces the cost of yeast substantially.  In the old days they used to hold back more than 15% I'm guessing to speed things up or they waited way longer not likely since time was in short supply even more so then waiting for slow natural yeast to work their majic :-)

We were so interested in your experiment I just took 25 g of my fully developed and ready whole grain levain of 300 at 68% hydration and mixed it with 30 g of water and 45 g of white flour did 5 minutes of 3 fingered, one handed slap and folds, added some salt and did a minute of more slap and folds before putting it to rest so we could do 3 sets of S&F's on it over the next hour just like we would any other bread.  It was one of silliest things I have ever done but my apprentice wishes she would have filmed it :-)

After the S&F's we will let it ferment on the counter counter for an hour before going in the fridge for a couple of days with the ready levain to bake off side by side on Monday or Tuesday.  This is the normal way we do things to get the most sour in bread.  It will be interesting to see which one produces it.

Thanks for posting your fine bread and experiment David.

Interesting experiment. Thank you for sharing, Larry, and both loaves look great, too. :)

As other people have already mentioned, I've always thought (and have read in various bread books) Old Dough/pate fermente was meant to be used to improve flavour/texture rather than as a primary leavening agent, so I'm urprised and quite impressed you managed to achieve to make the beautiful loaf using only pate fermente.  In my earlier days of (mildly) serious baking (= pre-sourdough days), I used to use pate fermente often to add extra flavour.  One of the books I used to use a lot those days suggested (for home bakers) to make a large batch of 'pate fermente,'  divide it into small potions (like 50 - 100g each)  and keep them in a freezer to be thawed and added to dough when you make bread.  Obviously large population of yeast would die when frozen, so it wouldn't be very useful to stimulate extra gas -production during fermentation, but it did work as flavour-enhancer.

my copy of your experiment turned out great with slightly different out comes.  The old dough had the full, deep, sour taste like it normally would as day old bread.  The old dough rose slightly better and had slightly larger holes.    I'm glad I did the test to taste the difference.  It is striking.

Thanks for the inspiration. 

David - it's been a while since you posted, but I wanted to thank you for it.  Very helpful.

Could you post what the standard formula is that you use for this loaf? (before the modifications for the Old Dough?)

Brad

     I've been making sourdough bread from a Old dough/pate fermentee/sourdough starter for about 15 years now and can't believe how some say using it has no effect on the dough or flavor.  Also, combining 'old dough' with commercial yeast to me would be crazy and cause competition between the two different yeasts.  There are some bakeries in Italy that have old cultures/starters for bread that are over 100 years old, the flavor of which should be awesome.  I do have a recipe for my bread but it isn't broken down into percentages like yours.  It's one I developed through trial and error years ago.

      I always save about a heaping tablespoon of dough before any salt is added.  I do not add any sugar, oil, eggs, etc to my sourdough and the sour flavor can be adjusted to your liking with retarding and proofing.  Maintaining a sourdough culture for long perionds is easy and should never have oil, salt, sugar, or eggs in the sample which would interfer with long periods of storage and lead to spoilage.  Never is a strong word, especially when people like to experiment...to each his own.  I store my sample of culture in a 4oz jar in the frig for months at times without feeding.  Yeast bacteria in cultures are very strong and if they can extract it from the Giza pyramids then keeping it in the frig without feeding is doable.

      24 hours before use, I feed once or twice, and then start with the poolish.  With 1 Tablespoon of culture I add 1/4 cup flour and water and let raise for 4 hours at RT.  Then increase to 1/2 cup flour, 1/4 cup water(depending on dryness increase water as neccessary), RT for 4 hours.  1 cup flour, 1/2 cup water, and finally 2 cups flour with 1cup water with 4 hours inbetween.  This can be adjusted to your schedule to 6 hours inbetween additions but the yeast is strongest with 4 hour intervals with the doubling of ingredients for the poolish.  Now I have a large portion of poolish/biga to add when making the actual dough.  I add all the poolish/biga, 3 cups RT water, 1 cup Graham rye, 1 cup whole organic wheat, 2 cups KA bread flour and a 1 tablespoon sprouted wheatberries(dried & ground) aka diastalic malt, and mix until combined and autolyse for about 1 hour.  This is when I take a sample to store in the frig, just 1 heaping tablespoon and set aside in a small jar at RT and later refrigerate.  Then add 1 1/2 tablespoons of course sea salt, mix, add 2 cups white KA bread flour and air knead for 15-30 minutes depending on dough.  Place in a tub and S&F 3 times during proofing, shape, raise, bake.   I also use the homemade diastalic malt when making the poolish but don't measure, just pinches here and there.  I bake at a high temp, steamy oven, in cast iron pans.

      I know this is a rough formula and I do have it on paper but this is off the top of my head without looking.  Please, I am open to any responses and help for sure.  For instance, I work my dough by feel, and don't understand percentages very well and I'm confused about using the term poolish vs biga.  When doubling my starter x4 is that a poolish or biga?  It ends up to be dryer than a poolish in the end.  I usually do not cut my bread until the next day, it's light, airy & moist, crust is hard, and  the bread becomes more sour as it ages.  Keeps well on the counter or table and I once tested it's lasting quality and found it took 2 weeks to grow any kind of mold during the summer.  Usually, it's gone in one to two days though.