Help! Dough felt great but bread was heavy
I'm still a novice, mainly aiming for a great multigrain/wholegrain loaf with consistency. I've turned out many great loaves but am still getting inconsistent results. I just can't tell if I've done enough, or too much, kneading.
I'm currently using Peter Rinehart's Whole Grain Breads recipe for "Transitional Multigrain Sandwich Bread". I'm using a locally grown and milled Red Fife whole wheat flour which is a bit tricky in itself, but this recipe is about half all purpose/bread flour.
The dough for the last loaves I made seemed just fine (although I may have left the bulk ferment for longer than I should have). I wouldn't say it passed the "window pane test" but since there are so many coarse grains in the recipe (soaked overnight) it's hard to tell, so I just carried on since the dough felt really nice otherwise.
I knew I was in trouble when the dough tops split while proofing in the pans, as if the dough was just too weak to hold together. The loaves never really rounded above the pan as I expected them to from previous experience, but I could tell they weren't going to so I baked them anyway. As expected, the bread was heavyish.
My question is: should I have kneaded the dough longer to achieve the "window pane test" even with all the grains, to strengthen the gluten? What does dough look like when it is kneaded too much?
Or was the weakness of the dough due to letting the dough rise too long on the bulk rise (Peter Rinehart asks for 1 1/2 times volume on bulk rise for his whole grain doughs but since this recipe is half all purpose flour, I didn't think one and a half times volume was enough.)
One more thing about kneading: I usually use the "french fold" method (following Richard Bertinet video) and a few stretch and folds. But in this case I followed Rinehart's recipe, which called for kneading, as closely as possible. (Tomorrow I will try the recipe using folds). Are the different methods interchangeable regardless of the recipe's instructions??
All thoughts on this will be much appreciated!
-Diane
I have Peter reinhart's Whole grain breads, and i believe the solution to your problem is in delayed fermentation. Delayed fermentation method is simply retarding the yeated part of the dough in the refrg. for 24 hrs, before finally mixing it with the remaining part of the dough or Autolyze. The retardation for Whole grain dough will activate amylazae enzymzes which turn the carbs.. into simpler sugars easier for the yeasts to digest later, and in effect strengthening the dough. This way, you may skip long laborious kneading, and at the same time extract subtle sweetness from your whole grain bread.
Hope that helps,
Mebake
Ya know, almost the same thing happened to me once when making Reinhart's rye seigle. The first time went great. The second time the dough failed to rise very much during the final proof and, sure enough, cracked, leaving me with delicious bread crumb material.
At the time I decided the culprit was accidentally leaving the pan on top of the grill while the oven underneath was preheating. I assumed the loaf got too hot, either drying out the dough or killing the yeast.
Overproofing on the rise (or any rise for commercially yeasted dough, for that matter) shouldn't be a problem as long as you punch the dough back down. And I don't think it's likely that we can overknead with our bare hands. Underkneading wasn't it, either; I made sure the windowpane test was being passed.
Mebake, I was following a Rinehart recipe, which included a soaker (room temp) and a biga (fridge) to ferment overnight. I'm mainly wondering about what leads to a dough cracking. Does it mean the dough was not kneaded enough? Or did it ferment too long? Or something else?
Based on Caltrain's response I'm wondering if the long ferment was the problem; maybe I should have punched it down to let it rise again before forming the loaves. Any other thoughts...?
It is only natural what you are experiencing. Peter Reinhart did not suggest that window pane test is to be carried out for all types of bread. Multigrain breads, including transitional ones, contain coarser milled grains, which eventually acts razor edges along with the fiber within the dough, thus hampering the extendibility of the gluten strands. However, the closest to a window pane success you may get in this bread is to cook the soaker gains untill they become tender (sort of like a mash).
Mebake