I almost always do king arthur's no knead sourdough bread recipe and this time I decided to add an autolyse. I held back about 30g of water to mix the salt into. My gosh, the whole thing looks like a gooey mess and it took forever to incorporate the starter and extra water. Is there any better way to do it? And is it even necessary in a no knead recipe? Thanks very much!
Autolyse normally speeds up gluten development by giving the flour time to hydrate, delaying the starter and salt will normally help as these both tend to draw moisture away from the flour while tightening the dough at the same time.
What was the recipe you followed? check you haven't made a mistake with the measurements and the temperature of your water is correct also your starter is at its peak, anything above 70-75% hydration will normally 'feel off' at first until you have done your second set of folds or enough time to develop. if your still having trouble try just delay the salt and extra water.
K
An autolyse doesn't sound like it'd add much to a no knead recipe.. did someone recommend that? Doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
That being said, I've never had any issues like that ones you're describing with mixing in starter and water. And autolyse makes that super easy for me.
Ive read Autolyse differently. What it actually does is start the release of Maltose. This provides enough food throughout that after the salt is added the yeast has had enough of a head start to keep thriving. This balance of yeast growth vs salt retardation allows long fermentation time which drastically improves flavour.
I personally do not see any difference in the levels of gluten. My un-autolysed and autolysed doughs both build glutens quickly. You cant get More gluten from the same amount of starting protein.
I strongly believe that if Autolysis were the gluten magic bullet its expressed to be then people wouldnt be seeing such issues with structure in their sourdough. Basically, everyone's doing it in vogue and for the wrong reasons.
When I read the remarks of this apparent Baking Scientist, thinking about how to use Autolysis took a strange turn for me. I shall try and retrieve the information to share. Let you know in due course.
Im a novice trying to weigh up tons of conflicting information...
There is no reason to hold any salt or water back from the autolyse, see this video for a comparison of adding salt vs adding later, TLDR no difference
I never autolyse. It doesn’t make a difference in my opinion. Maybe like a previous poster pointed out, it’s a redundant process for long fermentation no knead doughs.
i agree with you by the way. It’s a drag.
Is there a better way to do this? I'm a fan of the easy, no muss no fuss route. Which is - mix dry ingredients (salt and flour), mix wet ingredients (water and starter), mix dry and wet. Wait at least 12 hrs (overnight in the fridge), shape it, proof it (basically allowing it to come up to room temp), bake it. No need to worry about anything else. The 12+ hrs in the fridge combines autolyse, fermentation and gluten development. Some prefer to romanticize the process, which is fine and dandy, but it really breaks down to those few steps.
phaz, your process is similar to mine. Although I've also cut out the part where I weigh everything. Now I just have standard volumes I use, eyeball it and go by look and feel to get hydration right. So I spend a few minutes mixing, put it all in a cooler (not the fridge) for 16 hours. Then shape it, rest it while the oven warms up, and bake it.
Autolyse is something to try when you start to see if it makes sense for you. But it never did anything for me.
Sourdough has to be something you do often, because the starter is always there wanting to be fed or used. If you're going to do it often, it has to be simple.
Lol - I still weigh stuff, but I use an atsaboutit scale - like I throw some flour in, atsabout right - add some water, atsabout right - so on and so forth. That's how I do all my cooking. Autolyse is supposed to allow the flour to hydrate before kneading to facilitate gluten development. Since there's no kneading in no knead bread, there's no need for an autolyse (that's a mournful!). And if ya think about it, no knead has a 12+ hr autolyse built in. Less work is better work, and getting someone else to do it is even better. Enjoy!
There’s probably a way to present your POV here without completely dismissing the myriad valid ways to bake bread other than your own.
Calling anything past mixing the ingredients and bulking in the fridge “romanticizing the process” is weirdly aggressive to the other bakers on this forum.
Well, I see all sides on this. The context in which one learns seems suited to the context of the requirement to bake bread.
Its just a different approach.
I, too, found myself writing text only to go back and change it later because reading it back it made me sound like I know what Im doing... which I dont... and a total snooty arse, which Im not. At this point rewording was actually difficult and still get my point across! :p
How would that dough ferment enough? I can leave my dough in the fridge 12-36 hours, but that's after 4-6 hours in RT where the fermentation happens. If I put it straight in the fridge and it proofed, my fridge would be way too warm.
A few points :
If you like your bread and you like working with your dough as it is, there's really no need to change it.
A no-knead dough is already getting a chance to rest and hydrate before kneading.
If you want to experiment, try it as a 'true' autolyse: mix all the water and all the flour, then after half an hour or an hour, knead in the salt and the levain (the sourdough starter) together. But then you no longer have a no knead bread. This might be useful if you wanted to make a pan loaf.
An autolyse step is extremely helpful to me, but I use 100 whole wheat flour, which behaves completely differently than white flour. To get whole wheat to turn into a nice supple dough instead of a weird, stringy, rubbery, unpleasant... stuff... I have to autolyse it!
No one who talks about baking with white flour has this kind of experience. For them, it's this subtle technique thing they employ to get certain dough characteristics for certain breads. For me, it's a fundamental to make the dough work at all.
I get what you're saying, Jess. I mill my own flour, but I don't use the wheat flour I make whole. I've run it through a sieve. I do use my rye flour whole.
As a point of reference, I use 50% KA bread flour and 25% whole rye and 25% home milled hard red wheat.
If the baking scientist comment was towards me, i work in the industry but i am far from a scientist
Um, I dont suppose it was 'at' anyone. Just the maniacal ramblings of a student flailing wildly at many opposing strings.