January 7, 2024 - 1:36pm
Panettone Final Proof Duration
During my not very successful attempts at making panettone before Christmas, I found that on a couple of occasions the primo had a fantastic rise - it probably nearly quadrupled. This was a totally unexpected (and pleasant!) surprise. So I happily proceeded with the secondo, thinking that this was going to be the best panettone I had ever made, but sadly it wasn't!; Instead of the 5 hours final proof that I hoped for, it crawled along and I did a "ran out of time" bake after about 11 hours.
How can this be?
Lance
Share
I think this can be explained if we consider what causes the leavening action. Yeasts of course, but for every molecule of glucose consumed by heterofermentative bacteria they output one molecule of carbon dioxide while for every molecule of glucose consumed by yeast, two molecules of carbon dioxide are released during fermentation.
If the bacterial action is too potent, evidenced by a low pH after rising, more of the leavening has been in part caused by the bacteria. The bacteria being abundant can initially cope with the concentration of the sugar in the first dough, although they may grow little if at all. But as the sugar concentration increases further in the second dough they are further inhibited. The yeasts being undeveloped, masked by bacteria gas production, then slowly struggle to push up the final dough.
That seems to make sense (unfortunately!).
False positive = false dawn. Oh well, back to the drawing board....
Lance