Ladies and gentlemen, I present you, high hydration stiff dough paradox!
I chose to postpone my quest for soybean baguettes for awhile, turned out it's a bit frustrating trying to get good enough results using flour so fatty. I love the flavor though. Might make ones again as batards with chocolate chips.
So I had too many sweet potatoes on hand, I decided to make baguettes.
I had beef with my outlandish complainer neighbor about me practicing flute, I forgot adding salt lol.
I apologise for the messy and hasty post, I had plenty of things on my plate (still have!), but I found something interesting, I thought it might be worth sharing
Mixer and food processor are mandatory. Dough is too stiff and sticky to be worked by hand.
Summary:
Fine bran starter (bran:sugar:water 8:1:3), all sweet potato puree levain, 14% protein bread flour, 23% sweet potato by dry weight (assuming sweet potato is 79% water), gas deck oven, plyboard & parchment, electric water spray, couche, 12 hours levain, 23% prefermented flour, windowpane, spiral mixer, cold bulk, 3 stages levain, steamed and pureed sweet potatoes, autolyse
Tasting and Verdict
The bread is surprisingly sweet, just like eating crispy leavened potato, and the absence of salt makes the sweetness really shine. Oh, and they're sooooo soft. The Asians will love them.
Will I make them again? I personally don't like baguettes that bend after cooled down like they're having erectile dysfunction. I feel 70% hydration is the limit before baguettes start to bend. Maybe I'll try reducing the potato next time to achieve lower hydration.
Regards,
Jay
- WanyeKest's Blog
- Log in or register to post comments
The list of tantalizing details here offer a delicious accretion of meaning, Jay. So much so that they kind-of constitute a short story: an oafish neighbor complaining about the the flute ... pausing the use of fatty flour ... too many sweet potatos ... the preference for rigidity ... I mean, there are just so many intriguing things going on.
Your baguettes look great, but the flop must be hilarious. I assume you used orange sweets. Next time (if you've consumed your current surfeit), maybe try white sweets, which are a bit starchier and less sweet. I might be tempted also to up the %age of bread flour, as a bit more gluten would likely help the poor baggies withstand gravity.
Cheers!
Rob
Ha!
I have bipolar disorder, and have harnessed hypomanic episodes to increase productivity without crashing :D
About baguettes with erectile dysfunction, I noticed that with other flours too. 70% is really the limit of my preference where baguettes don't bend.
I feel soft crust is worse than stale bread
And I don't know much about sweet potatoes, but this variety I love for it's honey-like flavor and melt-in-mouth quality
Jay
Love the orange crumb color. I still have some sweet potatoes that I baked, pureed, spread onto parchment and dried in the oven last year. I have used the flour (made from blitzing the dried flakes in the FP) in blondies before, but now I'm ready to try it in sandwich bread after reading about your experience. Thank you for the inspiration :)
Hope you still remember me! I feel honored knowing this messy writing inspired you in some way!
I have a tested sweet potato milk loaf formula, it involves 15% sweet potato dry weight (of total flour, using puree), 80% hydration, 10% fat, and 7% brown sugar. Perfect for sandwich, but too wet for cinnamon rolls.
I would feel honored if you give the formula a try
Jay
Thanks Jay,
Yes, I do remember you, but I've forgotten what we conversed about. It was a while ago.
15% sweet potato flour sounds like a good place to start, but I still have a few weeks worth of bread in the freezer to use up first.
Thank you for the formula, and happy baking!
dw
It was about levain. I had black rice starter, now it's low hydration bran starter with a touch of sugar to make it a bit more osmotolerant
Since our last conversation, I have tried levain made of pure mungbean, adzuki beans, oat, soybeans, black rice, rice bran, peanuts, and many others. Turned out, we don't really have to be consistent with the substrates, not even have to use starchy flour!
Regards
Jay
Congrats on the success! And I'm bowled away by the variety of things you've tried in your baking.
Thank you! I appreciate it
I try my best to include Southeast Asian ingredients in European style baked goods. Taking account ingredients availability, I feel it doesn't seem right to use pricey exotic ingredients, just for the sake of tradition
The muslims here will soon have fasting month, I'll do a sort of 'illegal' weekend bake sale during the month, I'll do everything viennoserie, sourdough soft buns and crusty bread, involving local ingredients like dragon fruit, soursop, guava, snake fruit, jackfruit, soybean flour, rice bran, and some others :D
Which country are you based in?
I really like Durian in yoghurt, have you ever tried making a 'stinky' bread?
Hmmm... and what about tofu....
-Jon
I'm in Indonesia
Since durian's flavor could survive cooking process (some fruit taste dull after being cooked), I imagine it could be pureed with yolks and condensed milk, frozen into cubes, poke proofed Danish squares with the frozen cubes, bake them, you'll have durian Danish! :D
I have no reason to use tofu since I work with soybean flour a lot lately. But I would recreate tofu into soybean creme brulee, or ginger creme caramel :)
Jay
Not too bad for a starting point:
My flour mix was 15% sweet potato powder and 85% whole wheat. I was curious to see if the orange would show through the wheat, and it does even if not as bright as with white flour. I kept everything simple to see how much sweet potato flavor would come through, and it's definitely enough to recognize the taste --- and enough that there's no need to go any higher. It tastes really good with honey-butter.
I did get a mild key-holing effect and I don't know if that would be solved by baking longer. Perhaps rolls or a free-standing loaf. The hot dog buns I made with part of the dough turned out great. We had them with bratwurst.
Because I wasn't sure how it would affect the gluten, I used a modified brioche approach to mixing. I mixed butter with the sweet potato powder and some of the water to make a paste that I added a little at a time after the rest of the dough was well mixed to good gluten development. I gave it a portion of the salt as well.
Overall, I'd say my hydration ended up 85% (the ww portion was 80% and the sweet potato paste 113% + butter). The paste was very thick but soft enough with the butter to work into the dough, and the final dough was firm and surprisingly strong.
Now that I know what to expect, I would try your 7% brown sugar (I used 5% honey), or add some additional flavoring, either sweet (cinnamon, nutmeg, maple syrup, vanilla, etc.) or savory (herbs, roasted pecans or pumpkin seeds, Styrian pumpkin seed oil, a chile powder?). You could definitely make some nice soft cinnamon rolls if you remove some or all of the water. Or add some sweet potato powder to the cinnamon filling.
Lots of possibilities. Thanks again for inspiring me to try this, Jay :)
dw
That's a pretty loaf! Thanks for taking all the trouble testing it! Truly appreciate it
Last week I tested my no-water-added principle to 80% hydration Japanese style milk loaves, I ask 4 neighbors to do taste test, they all were happy with the flavor and texture, and would buy from me in the future
I'm going to test it again as no-water-added 85% hydration loaves, if it holds well, I will make a post about it, otherwise, I'll post my proven 80% hydration formula
I found 7% brown sugar is enough for mild loaves, but if the room temperature is not favoring me, I would bump up the sugar up to 10% to balance acidity. I would keep salt between 1-1.5%, since 2% I found is too salty and masking the delicate flavor of the loaves
Jay
Just days after you started this topic, this paper was published:
Evaluation of nutrients, antioxidants and sensory characteristics of optimized wheat-orange-fleshed sweet potato and pumpkin composite bread and storage stability in three packaging materials (springer.com)
They cover a lot of bases, so it isn't a short read (and I only skimmed it myself), but it's relevant and the nutritional info may be of interest to you. They used raw produce (sliced, treated with sodium metabisulfite, and dried) to make the sweet potato and pumpkin flours, not roasted, but they packed even more sweet potato into the bread than I did and found about 29% to be the sweet spot for sweet potato. It was a straight dough (1.5% salt, 1% sugar, 1% margarine) with a lot of yeast (5% --- I assume fresh yeast), so a quick process and perhaps not the best way to do it. They recruited 50 people for the tasting panel, the only requirement mentioned was a willingness to participate. So, random people, but in which country I'm not sure. The authors are in both Germany and Ghana.
Anyway, timely
dw
That's interesting, Debra. I am totally intrigued by the 29% number. With cost and streamlined-process in mind, and by the math of the no-water-added 85% hydration formula with an egg added which allows me to put 20% sweet potato dry matter, what I would do with the remaining 9 percent is to outsource it as sweet potato flour, and add more vital wheat gluten to make dry matter with 12-13% wheat protein
The demography of my future customers appreciate fluffy texture and slightly sweeter product. I would settle at 10% fat and 7-10% sugar. As for yeast, I believe the use of instant yeast is inevitable for fluffy texture since time is the enemy when levain is used, I would use enough yeast to get me 1-2 hours of final proofing
Thanks a lot for the link, I will definitely read the paper, since this particular dough will be derived into several products, I need all ideas I can get :D
Jay
My loaf above had an egg in it too. Seemed like the bread might be too dense without it, but that's only a hunch at this point. I didn't use milk but will add it next time --- maybe in the form of sweet cream buttermilk powder because I have some that needs to be used. The butter was 12%, and I think the extra fat probably saved the dough from being stickier. I only used 5% honey because my roasted sweet potato was quite sweet on its own. Looking forward to trying brown sugar.
I used 1% active dry yeast (no sourdough) and gave it an overnight bulk fermentation in the refrigerator. The rest of the process was in room temp as the dough slowly warmed up. No dough degradation that I could detect. That was my biggest concern as I've had that type of issue with pumpkin puree in whole wheat doughs.
I'm not sure if I would describe the above bread as fluffy exactly, but it is very soft even 5 days after baking, and lighter than I was expecting it to be.
I will be trying more tweaks and flavors with this dough :)
dw
I tested the loaves again as 85% hydration, 20% sweet potatoes dry matter, handling the dough felt easy. I think I can bump up the potatoes to 29% just by using steamed potatoes, which means 116% dough hydration
10% percent sugar tastes sweet enough, I won't do more or less.
Jay
Great idea about drying your puréed sweet potatoes to make a powder from them. I’ll have to remember this for the next time I run out of purple sweet potatoes. It will make it easier to add to dough! Thank you for sharing this idea Debra.
Benny
Last week I made a new batch of sweet potato flour and I was pleased that it retained its orange color and came through in the bread. I started with two very large potatoes and roasted them in the oven at 375F-convection for at least 90 minutes until they were very soft and oozing caramel-like syrup. After cooling they went into the fridge for a few days.
When I pulled off the skins, more syrupy liquid drained out and I discarded that with the skins. Put the flesh into the food processor and pureed smooth. I spread half on a parchment-lined sheet pan and dried in the oven at convection 175F for a few hours (sorrry, I lost track of how many times I set the timer). After turning off the oven and letting it cool in the oven overnight, I peeled it off the paper and broke it into chips:
A spice/coffee grinder pulverized it into flour:
I was really surprised at how much weight it lost. I didn't weigh the raw potatoes so I don't know how much they lost in the initial roasting, but not an insignificant amount judging by how much the potatoes had shrunk inside their jackets. I kept track after that by weighing the puree on the pan before and after drying. It lost 78% of its weight during that phase which was handy to know when using it in the dough, because I didn't have enough powder and had to augment from the leftover puree and subtract its water.
Suffice it to say, you can get a LOT of sweet potato into your dough by taking out some or all of its water! And roasting well first produces really nice flavor :)
dw
Jay, wonderful post, it was a very fun read. I have wanted to add purple sweet potatoes to baguettes from some time but just haven’t gotten around to it. I’ll have to try it once I’m back home this spring!
Benny
Make them pretty Benny! I know my shaping skill is still not there yet, but I can assure you I'm completely obsessed with baguettes!
I ate a lot of purple 'tatoes during my weight loss days, later I found I like the orange-fleshed ones better for their honey-like flavor and melt-in-mouth quality
Jay