Kugelhopf rising problems
I have been trying to make Kugelhopf from an old family recipe. It was written down probably sometime in the 1920s. It calls for a compressed yeast. I have tried to figure out what the equivalent is with active dry yeast, but I guess I don't have the conversion right. The dough is supposed to double in around 2 to 3 hours, but it can take up to 12 hours to rise. I tried adding more yeast, but that didn't help. The recipe calls for fresh lemon zest and I'm wondering if that would retard the growth of the yeast. Any thoughts?
1 cake compressed yeast, 1/8 cup warm warm water, 1/2 cup evaporated milk, 1/2 cup water, 1/4 cup butter (2 oz) 4 cup flour, 3/8 cup sugar, 1 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1 egg beaten, grated rind lemon. The instructions on how to make it are rather poorly written, so I used the instructions from "The Bread Bible."
And the room where you are raising the dough? How did you activate the yeast?
I don't see anything wrong with the recipe although if you are using Active Dry yeast, use the directions on the package to activate it. Some of them take pretty warm water to dissolve the outer coating and kick yeast into action before adding to the dough.
Lemon zest doesn't do anything to the yeast in the dough. Half a cake of compressed yeast is good for 4 cups of flour for a simple dough, without sugar and butter, so the yeast has been doubled. A doubling of Active Dry yeast (for 500g flour in a normal white bread) would be appropriate. More in yeast FAQs at the top of the page.
I didn't take the actual temperature of the dough, but it was kept in a 70 degree room, in a rising box. The liquid was at around 100 degrees when added. It didn't use the cake of yeast as I couldn't find any, but used acitve dry SAF.
I added the yeast after I had already mixed the other dry ingredients together.
I'm glad to know that the lemon isn't the culprit. I'm going to give it a try again and see how it goes.
The package of active dry yeast is new and I've made other breads with it without any issues. Well, I guess things happen sometimes.
I hope it works out better and it was just an anomaly. Thanks for the reply.
or proof the yeast first before adding or before mixing up the dough. Get the water up to 104° if you can and add a spoon of the sugar to it. Give it a chance to start frothing before adding to the dough. The only other thing I could think of is that perhaps instead of evaporated milk you accidentally opened a can of sweetened condensed milk.
How much Active Dry yeast got measured out each time?
70°F is a bit low for raising dough. Not what I would call warm. Proofers are often set at or above 80°F Maybe it just needs some initial warmth to get started.
I run into old yeast every so often. How does the yeast smell? Yeasty? :) Old yeast can smell off or even rancid.
Just a few days ago I got a brand new bottle of vodka. I make my own vanilla essence by cutting vanilla pods lengthwise down the middle and dropping them into the vodka bottle. I brought a handful, 5 indiv. wrapped pods with me, grabbing them on my last shopping trip. Then the long trip here. I opened the first envelope and it was empty. I thought I had just lost not only a pod but some brain cells as well. Even looked around to see if it had fallen out. The package had no aroma. The other 4 packages contained pods but you can imagine, never thought I'd come up short. I handled them as a bunch and never thought to check each foil exactly. I saved the bag and slipped it into a zipper bag to take back to the store and they can test for residue, the bag was indeed empty.
Yeast can also go thru a few trials before you get baking with it. I've had killed yeast from a too warm shopping bag or sun shining on it in the car. Sometimes it just get old fast once the package is opened. Haven't had an empty package yet... I handle it like butter keeping yeast cool but who knows how it was handled before I got it. Old yeast is great yeast food though, and I chuck old yeast into dough so the active ones can eat it up. It won't do any harm to keep adding 5 x yeast until it finally rises to the occasion.
I keep my instant yeast in the refrigerator in a small jar, with the rest of a large package wrapped up tight in the freezer. Replenish the small jar when I need to. I had given part of my yeast to a neighbour who gave it back to me after about 6 months. When I went to use it, wouldn't raise anything. Smelled a little off so I chucked the about 1/4 c into the next loaf along with some good yeast. Worked great and no comments from the peanut gallery. I couldn't tell either. But it wasn't a sweet dough. I'm still using yeast from the same package so I can only guess that the yeast wasn't stored in my neighbour's fridge.
Did you save the cake somehow?