Now that I have your attention, I would like to improve the extensibility of my doughs. I work with high WW percentage doughs, mainly with high hydration, except for the pizza dough. The formulas are in here Bread Formulas. See the formulas for 80% WW @ 90% hydration and 100% WW pizza dough.
- I make an overnight poolish using 1/3 of the flour
- I use KAF High Gluten Flour for the portion of the dough that is not WW
- I mix to incorporation, then rest the dough, covered, 30 minutes.rather than using an autolyse. This was what the KAF Baking School taught in a class on artisan WW baking
- For the high hydration dough, I mix 10 min by hand with Rubaud's method per the Trevor Wilson video; the pizza dough I knead conventionally
- 1 hr room temp bulk fermentation with folds at 30 and 60 minutes. I often add up to 15% garnishes like olives, ononions, scallions, etc at the 30 minute fold, so that means folding until the add-in is evenly distributed
- Then into the fridge overnight
- Next day, pre-shaping the bread into a tight ball; 20 minutes rest; shape to boule or bâtard (the dough mostly pulls back when I try to stretch it for the bâtard), proof in banetton or couche per poke test (usually about 1 hr for a slow and partial response to the poke but not very much rise)
- Pizza dough gets pre-shaped to a ball, not so tight. 20 minutes rest, then I try to stretch it and it keeps snapping back. Another 10-15 minute rest doesn't help much.
- For the loaves, seeds on top and scoring (not very well yet)
- Bake in a dutch over or on a stone with steam
I get a little oven sporing, not much. Scoring looks lousy, too.
Do you think any of these changes might improve extensibility? Or any other suggestions?
- Use bread flour or even AP in place of the high gluten for the non-WW portion
- Make the poolish with up to 50% of the flour instead of 33%
- Higher hydration - bread dough to 100%; pizza dough to 70% with 5% oil
- Shorter mixing; 5-8 minutes of Rubaud rather than 10; Stop kneading the pizza dough before it's smooth
- Looser preshaping of the bread dough
Thanks
Just addressing your WW bread...
33% poolish seems high for a mostly WW dough, so I'm guessing over-fermented.
1 hour room temp bulk, plus overnight in fridge is a rather long ferment for a mostly WW dough with that much prefermented flour, so that's further evidence leading me to guess over-fermentation.
WW ferments a lot faster than than white flour.
Over-fermentation is usually the main cause of lack of oven spring.
And yes, going from a 14% protein flour down to 12.5% protein flour will reduce the "snap back" elasticity when shaping.
Another thing to reduce elasticity (snap back) with WW dough is a longer autolyse, or ascorbic acid.
Anywhere from 30 to 100 parts per million/ppm.
Sometimes I use 1/8th of a tablet of 500 mg vitamin C tsblet, to approximately get 62.5 mg of ascorbic acid. That's too little for me to weigh so I just break the tablet by hand or use a pill cutter.
62.5 mg = .0625 grams, so if I use 625 grams of flour, I think that is 100 ppm, if I did the math correctly.
Thank you for an insightful reply. What do you think a plausible room temp bulk fermentation time would be? Just mix, fold every 30 minutes or so, and wait for the dough to expand by 1.5x? My concern is that with a high hydration the shorter fermentation won't develop a strong enough dough.
The current schedule is pretty convenient, and I think the overnight fermentation brings a lot of flavor, Could I maintain it but increase extensibility by using less yeast? What % would work better? Something like 0.25% rather than the 0.34% I have been using?
I get the high elasticity even in the 100% WW pizza dough. Maybe I'll try the 5 hr room temp fermentation that the recipe author specifies.
cut way back on the poolish. 7% prefermented flour (14% poolish at 100% hydration) for that length of bulk is plenty.
Remember, the flour you're carrying over from your preferment is now fermented twice.
(I may have the details wrong as i dont/wont download files from goog docs.) so if the poolish is already 12/24 hours old, and the bulk ferment is 13 hours, and the proof 2 hours, then you have some whole wheat flour that has been fermenting/degrading 39 hours. There is likely your problem, I think. You can't take timings for white flour and expect it to work with whole wheat. Whole wheat continues to ferment, and degrade, in the fridge -- it does not "go on hold" in the fridge like white flour can.
So it's not entirely about yeast, but also about old flour.
I just picked up that your poolish is 1/3 the flour, so you have 33% pre fermented flour. There's an overnight for the poolish, then the day, then mix, then the overnight. So, by the time you shape it, the flour in/from the poolish has been wet for 36 hours, and the other 2/3rds at least 13 hours.
anyway, 33% prefermented flour is usually too much for an overnight bulk with WW, in my opinion. Also, if I'm remembering correctly, that high percentage does not go well with 10 minuts of Rubaud mixing. You're killing whatever gluten developed in the poolish. Remember, just sitting for a time develops gluten, as well as growing the yeast.
Is the poolish the same 80/20 mixof WW/KA as the total ratio?
I use only WW in the poolish. Your insight about the long fermenting is very useful.
If I want to have the long slow fermentation for flavor, can I do it if I use less yeast in the final dough? ANd maybe reduce the Rubaud time?
There is a Trevor video in which he demonstrates Rubaud, does 10 minutes, a rest, and a couple more minutes, and then bulk ferments about 5-6 hours at room temp. And I think his example is a white bread sourdough.
I would that thought that WW would retard in the fridge like white flour, but apparently not so much.
When I started these WW loaves, the dough would spread like pancake batter, so I have been doing everything I can to make it stronger. But apparently I went too far the other way.
I'm sorry that my prev comment was a bit confusing.
To keep it simple, just find a pre-exsting recipe for WW from a reputable source, that has been tested, like from a reputable bread cookbook author.
I think you just went off into unknown territory by trying to make your own substitutions and adjustments before your learned how to bake with WW. The charactertistics/attributes/behavior of WW, and the timings are different enough from white flour to throw things off and confuse the novice.
The good thing is that you don't have to figure it all out on your own. The work has already been done for you: There are plenty of WW flour recipes/formulas out there.
Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads is a good source.
Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book, updated editon, is another good one.
Good luck, amigo.
I'm sure you're right.
Can you post photos of the exterior, and interior (crumb)?
Add-ins can affect oven spring. The add-ins do not, of themselves, rise or create spring. But rather, as a percentage of the entire dough mass, they reduce spring. When adding thing like wheat or rye berries, I add them not sooner than halfway through the stretch-fold process. Think of them as disruptions to the dough structure, weakening or cutting it.
In my opinion many recipes, formulas or methods popular on this site call for underworking the dough. Take a look at French and German bakers, either on websites or YouTube. They work the dough far more vigorously than what is commonly discussed on this site. I argue that French and German bread makers are closer to the source of bread making knowledge and culture, and therefore can be reliably referred to as authoritative.
Try working the dough more, during the stretch-fold step. This means more, and more aggressive, stretch-folds. I do this with my rye Brötchen and it has improved texture.
I didn't get pictures and it's almost completely eaten. Based on similar loaves without the additions, it doesn't seem as if the additions have that much effect on the oven spring.
Would the more aggresive working make the dough even more elastic and less extensible?
Louis the suggestion by Dave to work with an established recipe is a good one. This is a favorite of mine, mainly because it describes the process in detail, including times and temperatures http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/33735/home-bread-fighting-gravity
As to the poke test, many of us who work with mostly or entirely whole wheat find it is not all that helpful.
For pizza dough, I normally mix it very little, and some say they take it out of the mixer when it is like cottage cheese - meaning very coarsely mixed. It usually develops during cold fermentation, which for me is usually just under 48 hours. It terms of stretching, I normally take it out of the fridge a few hours before I go to stretch it, and i normally stretch it, let it sit for a few minutes, and come back and it is pretty well behaved at that time.
Thanks for the good, practical suggestions.
If poking doesn't work so well, how do you know when to bake? I am usually afraid of overproofing, so if the poke recovery slows down and doesn't come out the whole way, in the oven it goes. I did that the other day and the loaf (in a bread pan, 80% WW 90% hydration) was sadly underproofed.
The pictures in that post are spectacular. But the formula doesn't help me much because I use commercial yeast rather than sourdough. I did find a couple of formulas for 100% WW breads, even one with a poolish and an overnight fermentation. The yeast in the final dough was about 1/3 less than what I had been using.
I got Dave Miller's basic 100% WW/102% hydration in the fridge (no poolish). I'm going to try the pizza dough with just a room temp fermentation.
Just before you shape the loaf/loaves, pinch off a small ball of dough. Tamp it into a small, straight-sided, transparent container. That could be a juice glass, a shot glass, a pill bottle, or something similar. Put a mark on the outside of the container that is even with the top of the dough. Put another mark on the outside of the container that is twice the height of the current dough level. Proceed with shaping the loaf or loaves. Put your "proofing gauge" in the same location that the loaf or loaves are fermenting so that it experiences the same temperature.
If you want your dough to double before baking, put the loaves in a preheated oven when the dough in the gauge reaches the second mark. If you want to bake your bread before the dough has doubled, you'll be able to choose when to put it in the oven based on how far the dough has risen in the gauge.
It isn't perfect, since the larger dough mass in the loaf or loaves is apt to rise slightly faster, but is much easier to understand than looking at a shaped loaf. You'll probably be surprised at how "small" doubled looks.
Paul
Great idea. I use a cylindrical plastic container with 1-2-3-4 liter and quart marks for overnight bulk fermenting; it gives me a good idea how things are going.
The question with the proofing gauge is, what if the formula says "Proof for 3 hrs" and not "Proof until doubled"
Louis, in general, bakers say watch the dough, not the clock. So if the recipe says proof for 3 hours, look for another recipe. The temperature of the dough at the time you finish kneading, the temperature of the room during those 3 hours, and the type of flour and yeast you used will all have a great impact in how much a dough has proofed in 3 hours. I would stay with the separate cylinder approach the first few times you make a recipe, if you take careful notes on all the variables, you may be able to use time in the future - provided each of those stay the same .
Thanks. The 100% WW/102% hydration that I started to proof just before I read your message went about 2 1/2 - 2 3/4 hrs before I put it in the oven. Based on the crumb it might have been slightly underproofed. But it collapsed when I tried to score it and only got some of the height back in the oven. The crumb was medium open, except right near the bottom (which is why I think it might have been underproofed).
I think I'll go back to 80% WW @ 90% hydration and see what I can do.
100% WW pizza dough tomorrow for lunch. I'm hoping that the 5 hr room temp bulk fermentation will leave me more extensibility than the previous batch, which I retarded overnight.