August 23, 2021 - 11:02pm
Has anyone else noticed flavor of whole wheat bread decreases as fermentation progresses?
Not talking about the sour flavor, but bitter etc. For me it has a kind of sweet taste unfermented, when fermented till rise it's flavor becomes sort of neutral and further it's flavor seems to degrade.
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I will try experimenting baking dough mixed only with water, flour, salt and not sourdough/yeast.
btw I use sourdough not yeast.
What type of whole wheat are you using? I home mill hard white whole wheat and sourdough, and don't notice any bitterness and it usually keeps for up to a week on the counter in a bag, with the only change being a slight increase in sourness.
because I used a unique sourdough that not only suppresses the bitterness of whole wheat but also tenderizes the crumb in this 100% whole grain (freshly home-milled 97% whole hard red wheat + 3% whole rye) bread.
Yippee
Baked unleavened/unfermented bread, for me it tastes better than fermented(except when fermented is toasted), for flavor one thing I saw helps is adding salt to starter also, and maybe increase the quantity, I read somewhere that salt decreases activity of bacteria more compared to yeast, one thing more I am adding is autolyse for a long time like(like 5 hours), the unfermented one also had around 4 hour autolyse, which I think helps with flavor.
What I have noticed is that the bad flavor is actually due to alcohol which I don't like, I think it's because the flour I use is milled at high temperature(aashirvaad sharbati atta), thus favoring production of beer compared to bread. This time I baked around 100% hydration dough and found the bad flavor seems to have increased, at lower hydrations, it's effect reduces as I have observed.
Got a starter up in 3 days(in this cool temperature), I also mixed in yogurt the first day btw, process can be so fast when flour has high enzyme activity, I think it was usable at 2nd day also(with a long fermentation)