Help!

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taytails on 6 Oct 2017 at 22:14

Hey There! I've got a few questions about Artisan Baking I was hoping someone may be able to help me out with? Please and thankyou!

  1. What ingredients cause Panettone to have such a short shelf life?
  2. What are the finished characteristics of Turkish Pidé (firm dough)?
  3. Explain the pre baking procedure required for the Turkish Pidé (wet dough), and why it is necessary?
  4. Poori is a type of pocket bread. What causes the pocket?
  5. What is a standard test to see if your flat bread is of good quality?
  6. In the “traditional baguette” why is it necessary to add the water in a number of stages?
  7. What are the effects on the finished product when you retard artisan dough?
  8. What are the ideal retarder conditions?

 

poori has a pocket because it is cooked at high heat so that an outside skin forms on both side, and the moisture in the dough turns to stream which is trapped inside. Same for tortilla, pita, and roti. It takes good technique to get these last three ( which are griddle breads ) to puff up during cooking, which indicates a good pocket is formed. Puri is easier- the deep frying makes the high heat and skin-forming automatIc, if the dough is rolled out thin. Of course there’s the vat of hot oil involved, but indians love to deep fry stuff. 

The effect of retardation of dough is for the yeast to further slowly consume the sugars in the flours and convert the sugar to flavorful by-products.  These are the sours and other flavors which develop during the slow retardation.  The "ideal" temp?  There is no ideal.  The idea is to not let the yeast loose it's power by being in too warm an environment.  A refrigerator at 38-42 degrees F works just fine.  Don't get too nuts about exact temperature unless you are a professional baker and depend on precise time for dough to be at the correct place in it's production in order for it to be ready for market, day after day after day.

Its not help adjusting temps to fine degrees unless you have a handle on yeast quantities and fermentation time and when dealing with cold retard its even less a factor since activity is slowed to a snail pace anyway. Better off discovering how you want the dough to develop for whatever loaf you are baking at the time, then fine adjustments Wil have an impact because at this point you are shooting to control the activity to match a development plan - once your development plan is clear then temps make sense - don't forget its really a 3 way function of temperature, yeast quantity and time :)
Usually a two,stage hydration is most common and reason comes back to minimizing the mixing / kneading time. The objective of a traditional French bread is to retain flavor which can quickly be lost with too aggressive kneading (due to oxidation). A typical cycle would be about 8 minutes gentle mixing with 90 percent water and then however long it takes to glutenize the dough using the remaining 10% water on high speed agressive final mix - if you can get away with the second stage between 2-3 minutes on high speed then the flavor profile will certainly benefit. The final might take up to 6-7 minutes if the flour is very strong. Addtionally the second mix can be reduced with an increased autolyse of say 1-2 hours as opposed to 20-30 minutes. Minimum time in have seen on the final,is about 1.5 minutes after a long autolyse and the initial can also be reduced. Quick answer - for flavor retention as this dimension will deteriorate with long agressive fully hydrated mixing (or kneading)