August 30, 2017 - 7:01am
doubling yeast and halving time
is it a fair assumption to say that if you double the yeast in a bread you'll half the time making it.
I currently make a great focaccia with a poolish which takes about 23 hours to make (and is worth every minute). However, i need to tighten the time up so i was going to make my 12 hour poolish using 40% of the flour and then triple the yeast the following day (that would amount to 1/2 tsp instant yeast) to bring the making and baking time down to approximately 3 - 4 hours. Making the total time 15 - 16 hours. The advantage is that I can take my time with the poolish (forgive the pun) at home but can speed up the making and baking the following night in a small bakery I temporarily have the use of...
thanks for the advice
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I'd like to suggest that you research the preferment sometimes called a flying sponge. Depending on what sources you might find, it is often described as using all the water, only part of the flour, and all the yeast in the recipe. This results in a very loose or soupy sponge that matures quickly, in as little time as an hour or a bit more. Due to the short development, it won't extract the most flavors from the flour but it the resulting bread is described as having more flavor than a straight dough. A quick internet search will bring up threads from here on TFL and some references to books and articles dating as far back as the 19th century. Obviously, this is a solution for a same day bread and may not be what you're looking for. Having used something like this method for pizza dough, I think it might be worth your time to investigate for days when you face time constraints.
thanks for that - i have heard of it but as a 'half-sponge' same method different name....good idea. I might try the poolish (cause i have the 12 hours for that and then speed up the 2nd half of the process and see how i go....ill research the flying sponge though - always love delving through history
since Postal Grunt offered a good solution to your problem.
Doubling the yeast SEEMS like a logical solution, but it doesn't work that way--because yeast are a living organism. It's population science at work. More yeast only makes the bread taste 'yeasty'...and here's why:
Here's the analogy: imagine you are trying to make babies (LOL, well maybe not you personally). Ok, raising cattle. You have enough food, shelter, and space for 99 cattle. If you have 33 couples and each makes a calf, you're good. If you try 50 couples with the same resources...well, someone's going to starve and get squeezed out of their space. Do the same thing with 12 pairs and there is plenty of resources to go around.
Compare that to yeast: you have a limited amount of 'yeast food'--flour, water, sugars. Adding more yeast is not, in the long run, going to make more yeasties--someone is going to starve and get squeezed out of their space and not be able to function.
With yeast, less is more. Which is why people are able to bake fabulous breads with Yeast Water--that's the equivalent of being a billionaire living on several thousand acres of farmland.
Raising cattle doesn't involve "couples" one or two bulls and/or artificial insemination and lots of cows. So you could easily have 50 cows plus the calves, there is even room for a few sets of twins.
Stressing budding yeast gets them to make more gas. Adding a lot of yeast in one space gets a lot of rise quickly.
thanks Min Oven - i think ill go for the poolish as it is and then use more yeast to speed up the next day process and see how i do based on the twice/half principle?
thats a great analogy....:) I actually tried making yeast water out of raisins and it was fantastic stuff - magical even....but to the point....does the logic not work that it takes a small amount of yeast a long time to metabolise the sugars in the flour and therefore more yeasties on hand to help would speed up the metabolisation process...? without going overboard...at the moment im using 1/16 tsp instant yeast in 150g flour for the poolish and 12 hours later adding 1/8 tsp to the remainder of the flour (225g). Basically im using 3/16 tsp instant yeast in 375g flour.
I was going to keep poolish as it is and add 2/8 more instant yeast to the final dough so final read is:
poolish: 1/16 tsp
final dough: 4/16 tsp
total 5/16 tsp
Is it a poolish? I was under the notion that a poolish involved half the recipe flour and water amounts. With a much larger yeast amount for the second rise to make it speedy skipping any bulking after mixing the dough going straight into shaping.
Am I mistaken?
Sheesh - this hobby / industry has the most messed up mix of terminology / definitions of any I've ever encountered!
Please share where you found that definition of poolish - I'd love to learn more! It's far more specific about the amount of flour / water / yeast than any definition that I've found so far, especially with it including the amount of yeast added after the preferment stage, and the subsequent timing with no bulk ferment and a single shaped rise / proof. I'm a bit of a word fiend, and I'm fascinated (and bewildered and ofttimes frustrated) by the massive differences in the definitions of the basic terminology that we are all trying to communicate with...
I've only ever found definitions of poolish to be a preferment with a mix of 50% flour / 50% water (so - 100% hydration) with a small amount of yeast, with the actual flour / water amount to be anything up to 50% of the total recipe flour, and the yeast quantity to be variable depending on desired timing (basically, anything from 6 to 24 hours, at prevailing room temperature).
The amount of additional yeast in the final dough (if any) I have also found as being variable, and not dependent on the preferment being a poolish or a biga or a pate fermentee or a levain. The timing of being able to skip a bulk fermentation stage and do a single rise shaped proof wouldn't seem to be part of the definition of any of the preferment types that I've found (but I surely haven't seen the scope of baking literature that you have --- and I'm limited to English only versions).
Thanks for the opportunity for me to end up soundly cursing the madness of our terminology (yet again)!
A poolish can have up to 50% of the recipe flour (I've done it with more, hehe, about 10 yrs ago) and normally equal amounts (weight) of water, but not always. Like you said...
Trick PopQuiz. :) (blush) (wasn't that good for an adrenalin rush?)
on yeast and its metabolism. She has baked many more loaves than I ever will. I was thinking about my own experiences with doubling yeast, which I have found disappointing; the only result was a yeasty taste without any increase in rising speed or efficiency.
I also based my comments on feedback I heard over and over when developing my wild yeast starter: throw part of the starter away before feeding to allow for a fresh food supply for the remaining yeast. Otherwise the food source becomes exhausted. And that there are a limited number of rises you can get out of a yeast dough before you're left with a hockey puck.
The great thing about baking bread is that there is so much room for experimentation. And if you fail, you can eat the evidence and no one's the wiser ;-)
" ...a yeasty taste without any increase in rising speed or efficiency."
That sounds familiar. That has happened to me with dead yeast but I did find out if dead yeast is thrown in early it can be a dough enhancer and active yeasties can use it up as food. Just as they use dead cells from dying yeast. Rancid yeast is another thing, haven't experimented with it as the smell makes me throw it away, not sure if bitterness would result.
SD Starters and yeasted dough.... (we are sort of mixing up our yeast types here.) One is kept and fed, the other feeds yeast and is killed. I can understand wanting to be careful with a SD starter but can't see the same applied to dough yeasts heading for the oven. Baking the yeast brings them to an abrupt end so why not crowd them and get the most out of 'em before their death or before the matrix gives out?
Sorry about the "mad" before the cow analogy. It's a word too emotionally charged these days. I should not have and I apologise. Please forgive me.
I took your comment to be humorous! You've always been a respectful poster. No harm done.
Re: old yeast--that very well could have been the case. I almost never buy yeast, preferring to rely on sourdough, but there's always at least one well-meaning relative who frequents the big-box store and then gives me a portion of that industrial-sized yeast package. I never go through it fast enough before the 'best-by' date...
Never knew that yeast could be cannibals!
I have never had ADY go rancid on me, but I do remember, eons ago, helping my grandmother bake with fresh yeast and thinking that my uncle must have left his soccer cleats in the kitchen given the...um...aroma.
when they are crowded, don't each other?
back to poolishness...
the recipe is a Maggie Glezer (her book is wonderful) adaption of the ACME herb slab which uses a smidgeon of yeast the night before to make the poolish and an 1/8 tsp 12 - 16 hours later. Tiny amounts. Im a real believer in trying to minimise yeast in order to maximise the flavour of the bread...anyway im happy to have a long slow poolish fermentation but the following day i have to get to bigger kitchens and have less time so i need to speed up the 2nd half of the process....bring it down from 12 hours to 4 therefore i thought id use 1/4 or 1/3 tsp yeast and see how i go....
generally with my poolish i do 100% hydration of half the flour and add a pinch of yeast and slow ferment to maximise flavour. Then the following day add the rest of the ingredients and more yeast...anyway im going to double up tomorrow and see how we go. Keep my bread diary at hand and report back. By the way i looked up pinch and apparently it has a weight of 1/16 tsp. Its a mad world :)
just to report back on the changes. I kept the poolish to its original 1/16 tsp for a 12 hour poolish and increased yeast in final dough to 3/8 tsp. I basically halved the total time for final dough - bake from 12 hours to 6 hours. Temperature was a little warmer etc but give or take half the time for 3 times the yeast in final dough. Tasted delicious : )
lesson learnt.
Oh and made buchteln today a Bohemian yeasted bun - easy to make and utterly divine to eat check out the recipe at http://www.lilvienna.com/buchteln-sweet-austrian-yeast-buns/ oh and shes an Austrian cook (theyve claimed it as Bohemia was once part of the Austro-Hungarian emprire)