December 21, 2011 - 2:11am
Dough getting much stiffer after first fermentation
Hi,
in this period I'm preparing a lot of panettones with a lot of sugar and fats in the dough:-)
What I noticed is that after several hours the first dough (very slack at the end of the kneading) gets much stiffer, it can even be handled by hands. I wonder if this effect is due to the acidification that comes with fermentation, or to the nature of the flour (W 410, 14.5% proteins) or -possibly- to vitamin C (not listed in the in bag, but almost surely present in the flour).
Does vitamin C act in the long term? What would happen if I added some more dissolved in the water of the dough? Would it help to increase the absorbence?
Nico
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Hi Nico,
Plant bakers use ascorbic acid with the improver in order to provide increased dough strength during mixing and the early stages of fermentation. They rely also either on intensely mixing the dough with a high speed mixer, or, through the use of chemical [L-Cysteine], or enzyme [Protease, not declared!] in order to reduce the dough. So elasticity and extensibility are both achieved within 10 - 15 minutes of dough formation. You are doing the same thing, only much better of course, over a long period of time using something natural, called fermentation. Improvers are designed to speed up the process, so the longer term benefit is reduced. It might, however, give you better dough structure in the early stages of mixing.
I managed to completely over-mix my Panettone dough a couple of days ago. I ended up with cake!
Very best wishes to you
Andy
Overmixing panettone. It's not just me that does this then! I cannot tell you how many times I've done this! It's so dis-heartening isn't it?! I've overmixed the dough more times than I haven't. I too have panettone cake in the oven right now!
I'm guesing your using natural yeast - from my experience this is a completely normal observation. The acidity build up will strengthen the dough somewhat. This was especialy notiable in the Francesco Elmi panettone I made recently. The first dough was very slack after mixing but after fermentaion it was much more firm.
Yes, Mwilson, you guessed correctly. Elmi's first dough was exactly the dough that exhibited that particular behaviour more clearly.
Andy, thanks for your remarks. It's sad having a dough like that overmixed. Retry and you'll surely pull out of your hat a panettone as wonderful as your breads!
I'm guessing it's the excessive amount of gluten (for panettone) in the flour you're using that's responsible.
In order to achieve a more open crumb I use flour for pizza in the second dough (9.5% proteins). 80% of the flour is in the first dough, 20% in the second dough.