April 6, 2020 - 12:17am
bread turning out wetter & denser after halving the yeast
I've been working with the same recipe for awhile now, and tried something different: halving the amount of yeast (1/2 of a normal packet of yeast) and letting the dough rise over 2 days, 6 hours in the house and then overnight, one more time to shape into the loaf pan. 3 rises total. It's way smaller, denser, and wetter than previous times. What would be the reason for this? Is it the time? The only thing that looked odd was that the 3rd rise was very small and barely rose. This was a tin-loaf and I cut down the middle, but you could barely tell that there was a split down the middle...
Thanks!
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can explain many things. Could you please provide your temperatures. Just off hand it looks like half a package of yeast (3.5g?) exhausted all the available food in the dough and deteriorated the doughs ability to hold gas to raise the loaf. Spent dough. Temperature will speed or slow down fermentation but half a package will ferment less than a whole package but delay only be a few hours not for days unless very very cold.
Yeast cells double in about one and a half hours, then those double again, and those doubled again, exponential growth here. Try just enough yeast to see it, a small pinch of instant yeast or half a pea size of fresh yeast if you try it again. The process will be the same just slowed down. You will still need to watch the bulk rise, shape and final raise the dough, and it will speed up with the passing of time and fermentation.
Interesting. I didn't know that! Right, so 3.5g of yeast and temperatures around 70 degrees F. Normally, I do 7g of yeast at the same temperature.
If I do half of the yeast I normally use, should I fold the dough when it gets to half the size of the dough when I use a full packet?
Or should I fold the dough when it doubles?
Thanks so much!