Hi everyone,
As I am learning more on bread making I try new techniques and yesterday I added 3% (weight) 5 years aged cheddar to an otherwise basic 70% hydration white bread recipe. I added the cheese at the very end of the kneading stage.
Then the dough stopped raising. I did 2 stretch-and-fold cycles at 35 min intervals. The dough came out very nice and elastid, but it gained no volume. Then followed a 2h rise period and still no gain of volume. Then I sprayed the dough with additional dry reast and did a few S&F's and still no activity at all.
This morning I searched the net about the relation between bread teast and cheese yeast and the first hit I got points to some possible strong interaction or incompatibility between the two types of microbial environments. "https://www.homesteadersupply.com/blog/2016/03/qa-bread-yeast-nearby-making-cheese-can-ruin-cheese.html"
I did the same bread four days ago but without the cheese addition znd the bread was perfect. I used dry yeast from the same jar in the freezer, and I proofed the yeast at the start of the recipee.
I used the same cheese in a WW bread recipee a few weeks ago at a 1% concentration and the bread had good volume. So if it is the cheese, then the amount of cheese used in the recipee would be critical.
Has anyone else met that problem? Thanks for any clue.
First, the loaf with the cheese addition.
Then, the loaf I did four days ago without the cheese.
That's a new one for me. I use cheese curds in bread every day and I've made sourdough loaded with asiago and another sourdough that used quite a lot of parmesan cheese stock. Nor in my reading have I come across such a thing. How did you add it? Shreds? Cold cheese can lower dough temp and slow fermentation. You got some fermentation so I hypothesize that you would achieve the same volume in both loaves had you given it enough extra time to eventually get there.
Hi Michael. It was grated cheese so it practically dissolved into the dough. The cheese had some time to warm up to room temperature after I grated it.
I am happy to learn that you often add cheese to your dough without problems. That was my feeling since I am sure I have seen bread recipes with cheese in most breadmaking books I have seen. However books often skip practical details that one has to learn through practice.
The dough had four to fire hours of fermentation time following the kneading. That include the S&F's, the shaping and the final 1 h rise at 80 F. Since the dough had not raised after 1 h proof at 80 F I had to make a decision of what to make of that dough. I decided to try something new to me: I flattened the dough, sprayed with baking soda in the amount one typically finds in cake recipes, folded a few times to spread the soda and let it rest for a while before baking so I got the result you can see in picture No. 1. The dough looked absolutely dead to me. I agree I could have let it rest for the night just to see what would result of it.
So I am very happy to learn that cheese can be used generally without problems. Next time i will do the exact same recipe with no cheese to make sure I really master the basic techniques before using cheese again.
The cheddaring process uses salt to help the curds release whey.. the correct amount of residual salt in cheddar is key to its quality, and is what keeps it from overly acidifying.
If you make this bread again, you might consider adjusting the salt in your bread recipe downward, to compensate for the salt in the cheddar.
Hi Sue. The salt factor didn't cross my mind at all. Thanks so much for your explanations. That would explain why mixing 1% cheddar (baker's weight) did not ruin the WW dough I did weeks ago and mixing 3% cheddar did ruin yesterday's dough. I would like to know the actual amount of salt there is in five-years old cheddar. Unfortunately I ate the rest of what I had. I will try to find out if there are measurements results available on the net.
You can't do better than his blog bakes for a useful reference on amounts and process. I will link one example below. His bakes are very thoroughly researched before he publishes the results. Also you can ask questions and receive excellent answers. Good Luck with the cheese addition,
https://www.theperfectloaf.com/jalapeno-cheddar-sourdough-bread/
Hi. You have come up with a very good answer. Maurizio uses 25% sharp cheddar in his dough formula with a proportion of it grated and he used 1.8% salt. Conclusion: I have to look for some other explanation than the cheese in general to explain why fermentation came to a halt in my last dough. Maybe the particular piece of cheese I used was contaminated or I made a technical mistake.
Thanks everyone for your ideas.
I was hopeful that this would aid in your search for an answer. Perhaps walk through all the steps once again in your second bake and then try Maurizio's to see how it compares. Good Luck c