The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

So over this heat

kendalm's picture
kendalm

So over this heat

Baking when your environment is 10-15F warmer is just no ok sometimes - 30 minute proofing give you just enough time to prep - i want 68F ambient back please - Blech ! These are my yeast on salt hypothesis -> experiment as a corollary to Abe's recent proving that starters don't give a hoot if salt is introduced - yeast was on fire today. See pics of dough here - need to scroll down a little - http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/57019/why-dont-we-normally-include-salt-when-making-starter

Comments

Abe's picture
Abe (not verified)

And I can see why these lovely baguettes are the result. Once again excellent crumb Geremy. And the scoring is up there with the crumb. 

Two reasons why I don't bake baguettes. 1: they won't fit in my oven. 2: my shaping and scoring won't come up to scratch (thank goodness they won't fit in my oven as I can use that as my main excuse). 

Lovely as always! 

kendalm's picture
kendalm

I load sideways. I have two stones and instead of peeling into the oven I bring the stones to countertop - side peel them and back to oven. Contrary to a pizza post here where I referenced pulp fiction siting blow torch and pliers - I do actually use pliers to get the stone - the blow torch is for pizza crust adornments - amazing how power tools solve some of these delicate technicalities - by the way new starter starting today - I may lean on you a tad - cheers abe !

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

But the idea that salt doesn't do anything in SD starter is not at all correct.  Salt slows down the reproduction metabolization of yeast and LAB.  Just think how fast Abe's starter would have been without the salt!  LAB are way more sensitive to salt and yeast just like yeast is way more sensitive to temperature than LAB.  At normal room temperatures, 70 F, LAB are outproducing yeast by about 6-7%,  But adding 2% salt will even the playing field where the LAB will be restricted by it more than the yeast.  At 4% salt the LAB are dead but the yeast, while restricted are still quite alive.  Many bakers put salt into their levain when temperatures are high and the LAB are out doing the yeast by 3 to 1 or more like 13 to 1 at 93 F.  This keeps the sour in check for those that do not want such a sour outcome.  With your heat wave, putting slat in your levain should help keep the bread less sour than it normally would be by restricting the LAB more than the yeast trying to bring them more into balance,

What Abe's experiment proves more than anything is that even with salt added to slow things down it is so hot that the yeast in the starter loved the higher temperature more than it hated the salt. Same for the LAB but the salt effected it more.   At 84 F is the temperature that yeast love the best and where the LAB to yeast ratio is closest to 1 to 1  Abe's levain should have been much faster and his bread should have been less sour than it would have been at 70 F.  Ganzel isn't the only one to do papers on salt effects on SD cultures but they all say the same thing  - Salt slows things down - especially for LAB.

Happy baking

kendalm's picture
kendalm

that makes a lot of sense what youve summarized nicely here. Actually a great conclusion - as for me I'm lucky to just get a starter to life and maintain it and it boggles my mind how well you all get it.  I was just chiming in on the while seaparate before you mix up bakers yeast and thought it"d be fun to tag along. Tell you what reading all this and recent vids got me much more enthused to give another shot at the wild side - TBC ...

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

Really wild is better but living to tell tall tales of being crazy, really, really wild is the best:-)

Be happy on the wild side!

alfanso's picture
alfanso

so I guess that you have the oven issue resolved, at least for now.  

I find it a bit funny that folks like you in LA crave that cooler temp. whereas I love an 80 degree kitchen.  But then again, I did live in Sacramento for 15 years, were it can be a tad warm.

kendalm's picture
kendalm

Hey Alfanso ! Oven is still on the fritz so new strategy is to bake fewer loaves at a time. I used to bump it to 550 and load 3 or 4 loaves. The new limit is 2 starting around 480f - nice thing is that I can do that twice and still get 4 loaves and they cook up in 17-18 mins. If I load a third it takes about 23-25 minutes and don't get a good kick - really want a rofco. Btw I'm gonna try the hand again at wild stuff - batards based on a great YouTube vid - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=stoPYwdPU-E