April 14, 2014 - 8:15am
Raising in a different Light, Spectrum
Has anyone tried raising their bread in light?
How about a different light, for example infra red, or ultraviolet light?
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Has anyone tried raising their bread in light?
How about a different light, for example infra red, or ultraviolet light?
Infra red (IR) light is long wave length light and is essentially heat, I bake with it all the time. Ultraviolet (UV) light is short wave length light and can be dangerous to you causing damage to your eyes and sunburn; it might kill the yeast and the lactobacteria. I get enough of that when I'm out of doors in the sun.
That being said -- have at it, be careful, and let us know about your experiment.
Ford
It is possible even to bake with a parabolic dish reflector. More so if you live in a sunny clime, of course.
http://mass-craft-news-hobby-directory.info/parabolicsolar/big_dish_solar_box_oven_100_2291.php
As a Boy Scout, I learned to bake biscuits in front of an open fire using aluminum foil to reflect the heat to bake the biscuit dough.
Ford
certain chemical reactions by using different wavelengths of light in a proofer?
ago, but the wavelengths that visible light has are not that penetrative. The intensity of EM waves slows exponentially as you go deeper into the object (can't remember the coefficient of the exponent, depends on the material I guess), so I suppose the light probably wouldn't do much for the whole loaf. At the most, it could affect the surface of the proofing dough but in what way is hard to speculate.
If you UV'd the loaf, maybe the yeast on the surface of the loaf would die out and it wouldn't expand as much in the oven, but that is all conjecture about physics from a mathematician :) One thing's for sure -- if you irradiate the bread with beta or gamma radiation, you'll have some unleavened bread on your hands!
and ask... Would it benefit dough if we blocked out certain wavelengths of light?
(So far that would mean beta and gamma radiation are blocked by earth atmosphere.) UV and the visible range of light plus infrared. I would first have to compare dough in light to dough in the dark. During the same time of exposure. Hmmmm.
So if using the sun shining on a house on Earth... One dough is standing in the kitchen (shaded) one in the light (exposed) and one is in a dark box or cupboard (blocked light) would there be comparable differences?
Bowls are insulated covered with plastic wrap.
Lucy directly and she thinks that blocking certain wavelengths of light might be the key her. She thinks blocking them all by baking on a moonless night, shades closed, with the lights off using Big Old Betsy with the oven light unscrewed and the temperature probe in the bread, is the way to go - with lots of beer, brats on pumpernickel buns with German spicy mustard - I mean she is German after all, completely incorrigible most often and has a knack at lending a lessened understanding to almost everything.
The extra plus is that everyone, besides getting buzzed, would be surprised at what the bread actually ends up looking like when the sun comes up in the morning - and it is time for bed..
in the sun would sure be warmer, especially if insulated thus making a mini dough-greenhouse, so it should ferment faster.
If the temperature of both doughs are controlled to be the same despite one being in darkness and one in the light, I don't think there would be an appreciable difference. Any radiation (including particle radiation) that will penetrate the surface of the dough more than a centimeter or so will also penetrate an insulated box (unless it's insulated with lead). The overwhelming majority of the radiation that we experience comes from the sun and is in the IR to UV range. Nothing in that range of light will penetrate the dough more than a few wavelengths, so we're talking about a few thousandths of a millimeter. I don't think it will have any effect at all.
I think most foods that we keep out of the light is either because we don't want to encourage growth of microorganisms like mold (which can invade opaque objects via the surface) or because UV light can provide energy for certain reactions in semi-transparent foods (like beer getting skunked). This isn't a problem for dough since it is opaque and unlikely to be invaded by unwanted microorganisms. The other reason being IR light warms objects and that can also lead to spoilage, though there the problem is not the light itself.
By the by, gamma radiation is light, though it is colloquially used only to refer to high energy x-rays (gamma is the symbol for photons in particle physics). Beta radiation is electrons and is produced as a part of nuclear decay. The most common source for beta radiation in your kitchen is probably going to be nuts and bananas.