My adventure with Autolyse, crisco and eggs.
This particular recipe was easy to divide. All the liquids and most of the flour went to make the autolyse. The remaining cup of flour, salt, buttermilk solids, sugar, everything but the egg and oil were blended together and set aside. Once the autolyse side had sat for somewhere between two to three hours. i forgot. I blended the egg and crisco into the dry side. Ended up with what looked like yellow cake crumbs. First I folded in the yeast to the autolyse side. Then those yellow cake crumbs. It actually looked like I put dried yellow cake crumbs into a high hydration dough. It looked really bad. My first thoughts were, "I'm going to have bread with flavor chucks." Let it sit for around a half hour. Refolded the dough. Did this for about three hours. Each time I refolded the dough I noticed less and less of the crumbs. Till they were completely integrated into the dough. What I ended up with was over proofed. Because of the length of time it took for the crumbs to hydrate. Then I let the dough double in size. Another hour. Then another hour in the pans before baking. The loaves are on the flat and dense side. And a bit unusual. The bread smells like flowers. Garden flowers????? I have no idea why. Unusual but not bad flavor as well. I will try this again and see if it repeats this taste and smell.
Lessons learned. I'll keep the yeast out till the last half hour of folding in the crumbs. This way the final rise and forming the loaves will be closer to the normal around two hour range. I'm not experienced enough to figure out how much yeast to use for a total of five hours before the dough is baked.
rise if the folding takes the same length of time, all things considered equal. The bulking was going on while the the dough was folding and resting, you just kept knocking it down. Delaying yeast may change the flavour profile a lot as the flavour would have developed with the yeast in the first loaf.
Of course, one could just try the recipe without making the "cake crumbs" keeping ingredients separate until mixing up the dough. The "crumbs" were all fat coated which delayed their blending and absorption of the dough water. Fat is a flavour enhancer so the dry ingredient addition now had flavored oil in it.
Because it took three hours for the cake crumbs to hydrate. All I would of had to do is form the loaves and bake. Please let me know if I'm wrong.
Not sure how you could mix all the remaining dry ingredients with the oil and egg into an already hydrated flour. My thought for mixing this all into a cup of the flour was to spread it out as equally and evenly as possible. Just mixing it in instead of taking the dough out of the bowel and kneading it. After seeing the mess I made I was really surprised it worked. Honestly thought the bread would have yellow speckles.
Still baffled with the taste and smell. It's crazy different than what the bread tasted or smelt like the first time I baked it. I plan on doing this same recipe again this coming weekend. Really hope it has the same odd smell and flavor.
to blend with the eggs for a smoother mixture?
This recipe calls for buttermilk solids, crisco, egg, sugar, salt and a bit of baking powder. I blended all of this into that remaining cup of flour. Then added this to the flour and water autolyse after the autolyse sat for two to three hours to hydrate. I didn't think it would be possible to blend all those separate ingredients evenly into a very sticky dough. That one cup of flour broke down into a bread crumb like mixture. With some simple folding I was able to spread it throughout the autolyse.
Although there are many ways to combine ingredients,
I think I would have split the recipe differently including the milk solids with the flour and thrown in the egg whites as well with the water, all for the autolyse. Why? Because the egg white and the milk solids contain a variety of proteins that could help form the gluten bonds and get a lighter loaf. I would want them together hydrating.
After the autolyse, cream the egg yolks, Crisco, and sugar together until well blended, lighter in color and texture. Sift the baking powder with the flour and salt to mix well. Then combine the three mixtures in the bowl. The flour mixture should keep the fats from slipping around too much during dough hook or hand mixing.
Mini
Having the autolyse be nothing more than four and water would keep it true to form. The goal was to do as little modification to the autolyse technique as possible. The only modification I did was mixing in the 'cake crumbs' using a cutting in and folding over motion. The idea here was to see if almost any bread recipe could be started with an autolyse. Then have it's remaining ingredients mix in. Mechanically it worked perfectly. The autolyse reach windowpane. The rest of the ingredients was evenly incorporated. I'm not a chemist. I can't for the life of me figure our why this bread's flavor is completely different than the very same recipe done traditionally. Unforeseen chemical reaction? I've tossed the second loaf. It's flavor is that bad.
I plan on trying this again. But with a different recipe. Or I could try this recipe again. Try leaving out the butter milk solids. Kind of a process of elimination. The original recipe 'Buttermilk Bread' pg. 55 of B. Clayton's 'new complete book of breads revised and expanded" makes a really good bread.
And I want to try this again because it's fun! I love to try new things and push boundaries. If there is anything that can be taken from this. An established autolyes. One that has set up for two to three hours. Can reach windowpane after having fats added to it. Folding every half hour for three hours after the fat has been added.