The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

YW Success! Old sprouts OK?

BXMurphy's picture
BXMurphy

YW Success! Old sprouts OK?

I'm proud to report that I hatched a Yeast Water that raised a levain in 10 hours. I'm psyched! Forgive me for crowing but where else can I go to share a success with people who "get it?" :)

I did a bunch of reading... teketeke, RonRay, a whole lot of others, and followed dabrownman's Yeast Water Primer which turned out to be bulletproof. Thank you, everyone!

I'm going to bake dabrownman's 100% Nothing bread.

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/41650/nothing-bread-100-unbleached-yeast-water-white-bread

I sprouted 35g of red winter wheat berries a couple of weeks ago. After drying, I've just let them sit around in an uncovered jar on the counter at about 79° F since then. I figure I'll grind 'em up in my Mr. Coffee grinder and throw 'em into the recipe as a first foray into sprouting and milling.

I'm thinking Nothing Bad will happen. I have a kitchen strainer that might be too open to sift out hard bits but if I get any, I'll soak 'em down for a couple of hours to try my hand at sifting, weighing for extraction rate, and soaking for effect.

Obviously not ideal but do you think the old, unground berries will lend an unpleasant taste or will it still be an improvement? Can you think of anything I should be on the lookout for? What could possibly go wrong, right?

Thanks again, TFL Gang!

Murph

Lechem's picture
Lechem (not verified)

A YW dough feels more hydrated then other doughs of the same hydration.  

The oven spring is immense. Get ready! 

Best of luck.

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

them then you want ti use them right away since the germ is still in there.  If the germ was removed you could let the flour age for 24 days and let it oxidize so it would perform bettetr, rise wise,  than 1-22 week old sprouted flour would.  Good luck!.   YW is slower than SD so remember that patience comes to those that wait a long, long time for ferment and proof.

You will like this simple bread and how god it tastes for a plan white bread - no sour though.

BXMurphy's picture
BXMurphy

Hi, dabrownman!

Mr. Coffee grinder did a fine job of making flour-ish. I kind of like the texture. I was mindful of your experience in burning out the unit and did it in three batches.

I did your three sets of slaps and folds for seven, one, and one minutes and three sets of stretches and folds on the compass points all on 20 minute intervals. There's two hours of mixing and fermenting.

Your method and timings are giving me some of the nicest-looking dough. Just like I see in the videos: velvety, smooth, nice handling, kind of flowing like lava. Thank you! 

I pre-shaped and rested for 30 minutes. Shaped and proofed for an hour and a half. Not really much of an amazing rise... maybe 25% judging by eyeball of a boule-in-a-bowl. The finger poke test says it's ready so I'm firing up the GE Profile main deck for an hour at 500° F and will let 'er rip!

I'm thinking this will bake for about 37 minutes in an oven turned down 450° F. Maybe 15 minutes in a covered DO and then turned down to 425° F uncovered convection for 12 minutes then take internal temperature and finish on the rack for however long is necessary.

I'll do the door ajar thing for 10 minutes and then wide open door for another 10 - just to heat the kitchen up REAL good. :)

Let's see what happens!

Murph

BXMurphy's picture
BXMurphy

Thanks, Lechem!

Underestimating the depths of my ignorance, as usual, it took this new baker over two hours to figure out how to scale baker's percentages to come to a final dough weight of 800g. But, I have that figured now for future use. Which is nice...

Murph

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

flour is always 100%  (or 1) and the water is some portion of the flour in this case 68% (or .68).  1+.68 = 1.68 total.  To get the flour and water is easy enough by solving for the flour

800 /1.68 = 476 g of flour  and 800 - 476 = 324 g of water.

Who knew algebra would be required for bread if nothing else in life:-)

BXMurphy's picture
BXMurphy

Hi, dabrownman!

That part was no sweat. The moving parts that tripped me up was adding in the starter which was at 100% hydration where I wanted 68% total. And then scaling to come to 800g total weight. I finally found what I was looking for at King Arthur Flour's section on baker's percentages.

It turns out that separating out the water and flour from the starter and adding them to the formula for total dough was step one. Then they had a nifty trick for "conversion factor" for scaling any recipe up or down.

Just from memory... add up all the percentages in the given recipe (in my case that was 170%). Then divide total dough weight desired by the total percentages from the given recipe. I wanted 800g total dough.

So, 800 ÷ 170 = 4.71

4.71 is the "conversion factor."

Next, multiply each percentage in the given recipe by the conversion factor.

My imaginary "given formula" started with 800g of flour but I needed to scale that down to find out how much flour was needed for total dough.

So, 100 × 4.71 = 471g of flour.

Of course, "100" is 100% because flour of a given recipe is always 100%.

68 was the hydration percentage

68 × 4.71 = 320.

I needed 320g water. Next salt at 2%...

2 × 4.71 = 9

I needed 9g of salt.

Then I backed out the contribution from my 71g of starter to find out how much dry flour and unadulterated water I would need.

The calculations said I needed 471g dry flour but some of that was coming from my 100% hydration starter. Starter was 71g. Half of that, or 36g, was flour.

So, 471 - 36 = 435

I needed 435g dry flour. And so on with the water.

Of course, you know this already or have an even better method. I post this here for anyone else who struggles with such things for their consideration.

Murph

BXMurphy's picture
BXMurphy

The given recipe called for 15% starter, or more properly, "levain."

So, 15 × 4.71 = 71g

I needed 71g of levain in my 800g total target dough weight to keep it at 15%.

Murph

nmygarden's picture
nmygarden

What can go wrong? LOL... I'm right behind you with a YW bake, did one several weeks ago and was a bit underwhelmed. Failed to take notes and now don't recall specifics, but I'm ready for another round. Seeing Dab's reminder about slower fermentation is encouraging - I think I expected things to happen a bit quicker, so felt a bit "iffy" about the vitality of my YW. Fed it some raisins and honey 2 days ago. Wishing us both luck!

Cathy

BXMurphy's picture
BXMurphy

Hi, Cathy!

You really can't screw this up - as long as you follow one set of instructions.

I've only been baking since June after finding TFL. Like many bakers, I'm sure, I read this and done that... After settling down and reading all the background from so many experiences bakers - some of blessed memory - I was able to find blogs, recipes, and techniques of currently active and experienced bakers whose advise I take very seriously.

These folks are some of the best at trouble-shooting and, best of all, understand that there is no "right" way. This means that there are no egos, just fun! 

I think I'm more excited about YW than I am about sourdough at the moment. I've done SD and know it works. I'm learning that YW works, too. Now, WOW! Think of the flavors that I can paint flour with!

Don't give up! Experiment and learn. Above all, share your experiences; everyone is the richer for them.

Murph

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

shaping for final proof or was it 11 hours?  I was warned by Teketeke that it would be very slow since it was a new YW.  I finally gave up on it after it proofed 80% and baked it off only to fined out the other thing about YW - it can have explosive spring in the oven!  This makes it the perfect addition as a 2nd levain for SD breads that are usually heavy and have a closed crumb .

The wait can be a long one........

BXMurphy's picture
BXMurphy

Hi, dabrownman!

You were right about oven spring - it practically takes the cover of the DO off itself!

My kitchen has never smelled... So... GOOD! WOW! Now THAT'S what a home baker's kitchen should smell like! Warm, fragrant with a sweet Christmas wheat note. I can smell it outside with the windows closed as I enjoy my cigar and Mai Tai.

I cheated a bit to speed things along. I had about 40g of discard YW after week one. I kept it in the refrigerator for a week - sediment and all. I had another - call it 15g - of discard from this week's YW. I put all that YW as part of total water into the one hour autolyse.

Half-way into the autolyse, I sprinkled the Himalayan Pink Salt (Brilliant! Thank you! Like that dabrownman touch?) onto the autolyse and then at the one-hour mark, stretched and folded it into the autolyse before adding the levain proper.

The bread baked to 211.6 internal after 15 minutes 500° F turned down to 450° and then 12 minutes uncovered on convection turned down to 425° F.

The loaf almost looks like your picture with ears coming out its ears! I'm kind of nervous because we all know the proof is in the crumb and that won't reveal itself until tomorrow.

Naturally, I'll take pictures and post - good or bad.

Murph

BXMurphy's picture
BXMurphy

Sharing from Instagram. Will it work?

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

sadly this isn't the easiest site to post picture to but it might be the worst!

BXMurphy's picture
BXMurphy

I'd rather have TFL without pictures than no TFL at all! :)

Floyd would have to invest heavily to add more server space and it would STILL fill up quickly with everyone posting all their pictures.

I think that putting in URLs from sites that require a log-in is the problem and is why it doesn't work so well. I'll bet you that I can upload the pictures from my own server and share that URL and it would work. I'll have to try that One Of These Days...

Murph

Danni3ll3's picture
Danni3ll3

for posting pictures. I post them first on Facebook (sometimes I make them private so I am the only one to see them and posting Picts on Facebook is super easy from an iPhone), go to my MacBook Pro and open the pictures on Facebook in a new tab or page, then copy the URL into this site's pop up picture window. I adjust the size to 400 or 500 pixels in the first size box, leave the second box empty so that the proportions stay correct, and then click the insert button. 

This saves me the hassle of sending the Picts from my phone to my computer, resizing them, uploading them to either my server or another picture site and then going through the hoops posting them here. My way is quite a bit faster. 

Hope this helps! If you dont follow what I posted above, I would be quite happy to go into more detail. 

BXMurphy's picture
BXMurphy

Hi, Dani3ll3!

Whoa! Facebook is good for something other than looking at someone else's kids, their pets, their food, or their idiotic rants and memes!?! :)

I am SO glad you shared that!! Such a nifty trick! Thanks!!!

Murph