Overproofed | The Fresh Loaf

I baked my first ever hockey puck. Two hockey pucks. I think I might have over-done it with the French folds in hot weather. The autolyzed flour and the starter were not melding well, so I did five stretch and folds. 25 minutes between each. In hot weather. Over-proofed? They just did not rise at all in the refrigerator. Baked anyway, hoping for oven spring. No such luck.

Should I just dry them out, grind them up, and add them to bread dough? I cannot remember what kind of bread that makes, but I think there is something. Any other suggestions? I hate to just throw them out. King Arthur flour is $#$#%# expensive here in Honolulu.

The hot dog buns, however, turned out great. As did the sourdough pancakes. Two out of three ain't bad.

I use old bread all the time! Altus I think it's called. I make crumbs of the bread, crust as well if my processer can take it. I freeze them until I'm ready. Normally I use 20% in a loaf, they offer an amazing taste to a regular loaf. This week I added Altus from a failed rye loaf I made and soaked the crumbs in a little water to soften, added caraway seeds and some lemon zest and added at the second stretch and folds.

I've done it. I usually go 33% Make up a dough 1/3 less ( or bake 3 loves) Weigh your finished loaf, right now or weigh them both and divide by to to get the average. Note for future use. Several ways you can go about "skinning this cat."

Cut up all the loaves into about one inch cubes and dry them. That takes the water out, you can add it back later, you can store in the cupboard. To use, weigh and add the amount of water to match your future dough.
Cut up and freeze (if you have room in the freezer) for easy removal and thawing. A screwdriver is handy to separate slices if they freeze together or spread out to freeze and then toss all slices into a bag when frozen.
Bake more bread right away. Crumble up a good portion of the bread, a food processor or blender is fun ( do not make a powder or flour, broken bits rise better) and you can toss in some of the recipe flour to keep everything from turning into goo. Or just toss big chunks of bread into the next batch liquids letting the bread soak and get soft (could also be a levain.) Then have lots of gooshy fun breaking up the bits with your fingers (got any sized kids around?) or use a mixer yourself. If you are prepared to make 3 loaves instead of 2 (oven room) just take one third of the bread you just made and combine with a fresh recipe of the same size. Be aware that Altus may speed up the fermentation so keep a watchful eye on the dough. I do tend to use more bread flour in the new batch of dough to ensure a fair amount of gluten.

No need to calculate for salt, treat Altus like a gluten free substance, may need to add back the water lost in the baking process of the recycle bread (also worth searching-> recycle bread) and.... yes, it ferments well and can speed up timing.

You can also crumble the loaf and bake again to make your own cereal or use on top of apple crumble, ice cream or trail mix. :)