For the last several years I have been baking focaccio using Peter Reinhart's recipe (with some modifiations). The result has been uniformly excellent, until yesterday. Yesterday's focaccia was terrible; and I have no idea what went wrong.
Here's the scenario:
I make the focaccio in 3 stages: first a pre-ferment, then a shaping and an overnight rise in the refrigerator; finally, the topping and final rise, and the baking. I start off with 325g of flour; use some in the pre-ferment; add the remainder the next day; then allow it to rise for an hour. At that point I divide the dough in half, and store half in the freezer.
This is what I did with the latest attempt. I made the focaccio 2 weeks ago, used half (it was delicious) and stored half. Yesterday I took the second half from the freezer, allowed it to come to room temperature; stretched and oiled it, and put it into the refrigerator overnight. Yesterday I took it out, allowed it to come to room temperature, put toppings on it, allowed it to rise, and then baked it. It was awful!! There was no oven-spring; the dough never appeared to rise; and, when baked did not cook properly. One could still taste the flour, and there was no crumb.
My question is: What happened? Why was the first half excellent, and the second half terrible? How did all the yeast die (if that's what happened)?
Insights will be welcomed.
Tom
The yeast froze to death. You got some rise with warming due to the CO2 bubbles already in the dough but no new CO2 was made during the first part of the bake, thus poor oven spring.
David
in my experience, freezing dough for more than 6 days makes the dough unusable and everyday in the freezer, the gluten structure of the dough breaks down further and will not hold a rise. in addition, the yeast activity is brought to a halt and needs much time to get back up and running (if in fact you haven't already let the dough rise sufficiently).
Hi Tom,
I was referring to the original poster's claim that she had put the finished dough in the freezer, not yeast or starter. In my experience, I have placed dough that I knew was good in the freezer and tried to use it. It appeared to me that the freezer destroyed the gluten network of the dough over time and almost completely after 2 weeks. After a few days the dough was fine and the gluten network could still contain the rise, but it degraded thereafter. I assume that this was what was happening. I'd be interested in other's thoughts on the subject.
I keep my fresh yeast in the freezer. I've read somewhere on this site that fresh yeast that has been frozen turns into an unusable liquid mess. I can assure you that my frozen yeast turns into a completely functional... liquid mess. I don't know why it almost liquifies that way, but it's still completely functional.
I'm now using small 25 gr dices, but have been using a 500 gr brick before, that lasted for more than a year. It worked great to the last cell. God bless 'em, those little cells.
I thought our journey of Artisan Breads was to avoid the freezer?.
If you are going to freeze yeasted dough you need to up the yeast content. You can even go as high as 5-7% of your flour weight. The more yeast for the freezer the better.
milwaukeecooking.blogspot.com
Cold temperature will kill activated yeast. Once yeast has fed it is vulnerable to freezing cold temperatures. Storing yeast dough in the freezer for more than a couple of days will produce a dough that will not rise. However, there is yeast designed specifically for freezers. Now, in defense of my statement earlier, upping the yeast percentage will provide a chance that there will be some yeast that will survive. By adding more yeast you are in fact adding more yeast cells. This is a gamble though. There is no way to insure that your yeast will survive the cold. I agree with sicilianbaker, we should avoid the freezer. There is no viable option for long-term storage in a freezer other than forking out $$ for altered freezer yeast. Retarding the dough in the refridgerator for a couple of days works. Retarding also helps flavor.
Barefoot-Baker: your reply seemed fairly hostile. Maybe I am just reading into your blunt statements.
Yeast can survive in freezing temperature and that is evidenced by the fact that one can freeze a wild sourdough culture in the freezer and then quickly revive it. Additionally, one can freeze dough and have it rise when thawed. From what I understand, some yeast will die, but not so many that you can't either revive a culture or use a dough.
From my experience, yeast dying in the freezer is not the problem. What I have seen is that after a week or so, it is the gluten network that erodes from the freezing and so when the dough is cooked it can no longer hold the rise so well. As for store bought dough, well, I have never known it to rise much anyway and have never used it or seen it in use. I would guess also that they have very short usage dates on them.
My guess is that you let this focaccia dough sit too long in the freezer, longer than your usual. After a week or so, doughs become usuable in the freezer from my experience.
I have never used store bought freezer dough but I have seen my grandmother use it once. I tasted it. It was bland. The one thing that helps store freezer dough rise is the addition of a leavener like baking soda. Store bought freezer bread also has a list of other chemicals in it that help yeast survive freezing a bit better. I would never buy or use store bough freezer dough.