I know this probably doesn't sound dramatic, but in practice it was pretty surreal as it is far and away the most preferment / per flour weight I have ever used in a dough. When I went to scale the ingredients on the day of the bake the remaining ingredients were less by weight and volume than what I had already had in the form of poolish.
I'm not going to lie this dough gave me some hassles, partly due to this high percentage of preferment and partly due to issues of my own creation. Firstly, one thing preferments add to a dough beyond flavor and yeast is extensibility. Two of the primary characteristics applied to a developed dough are elasticity and extensibility. The idea of an elastic dough, one which when stretched will return to it's original position, will come as a surprise to no one. Extensibility, however, is often overlooked. Extensibility refers to a doughs ability to be stretched without tearing or breaking. Different factors affect these attributes, mix time, preferment, autolyse and the variety of flour. For instance higher protein flours (milled from different varieties and extractions of wheat) add elasticity, while some flour (rye in particular) can add extensibility to a dough.
Between the prefermentation percent, and a cool dough which I probably under mixed, I was faced with a very slack dough when it came time to transfer from bench proof to the oven. I botched two out of the four loaves in this process and was forced to reshape them into a boule and loose batard. Of the two remaining loaves I did a little experiment. the first loaf I baked completely without steam, and the second I spritzed with water and steamed the oven as much as I could. The results can be seen in these photos:
-
Here is the loaf without steam.
-
Here is the loaf with steam.
The right amount of steam while baking allows for several things. First, a better oven spring, as it helps to keep the outer crust of the dough from setting before it has finished it's rise. Second, better color to the crust. The coloration of crust can be attributed to enzymatic activities which are go into overdrive when a loaf first enters the heat of the oven. Adding steam allows the surface to stay cooler longer, which in turn gives the enzymes more time to do their work before the environment becomes inhospitable. Third, proper steam can give the loaf a nice shine to it. This is because the moisture allows the starches on the surface of the loaf to gelatinize.
Sadly I did a fairly poor job of demonstrating this with my bread. While the coloration is much improved, the side view clearly shows that my second loaf has less volume than the first. In this I have illustrated what can happen when a dough gets OVER steamed, or in my case over misted. Over steaming results in a flatter dough with a tougher chewy crust and slashes that won't open. Though to be fair the time it spent in the fridge waiting for it's turn in the oven could have impacted its rise as well ;).
The crumb texture was perhaps the most open I have ever made, here a couple of pictures. One with flash to see the color properly, and one without so that you can fully see how open it is:
-
All in all it was an interesting bread. And while the results were similar in many ways to the ciabatta, it was interesting for me to see just how much a few tweaks to the formula affected the dough during the process. Here are the details from the bake:
Room Temp: 70.5
Flour Temp: 68.1
Water Temp: 80.3
Preferment Temp: 70.7
Final Temp: 73.5
30 minutes Autolyse
Mix: 2 minutes speed 2, followed by cutting with bench knife, finished with 2 minutes on speed 2
90 minutes bulk fermentation with 3 folds at 20, 40, and 60 minutes.
Baked at 460 degrees for 22 minutes with steam indicated above
Thanks for reading!
Vino
No comments:
Post a Comment