Does gluten development speed dough degradation?
Does gluten development speed dough degradation?
In an effort to develop sour flavor in my SD, I tend to over ferment the dough. Does fully developed gluten speed up the dough degradation process?
I ask this question, because lately myself and a number of other TFL bakers have been on the Slap and Fold wagon. After 300 slap & folds, the dough should be very developed. But the dough now settles in for a bulk ferment which usually last 2-4 hours or more. And during the BF the dough receives multiple sets of Stretch and Folds as a matter of practice.
Should I re-think the slap and folds in consideration of the dough's strength?
If the dough is set to ferment for long lengths of time should it be developed much less, if at all, in the initial stages?
Dan
interesting question, but I don't know of a process that would support that being the case...gluten is not like LAB's and yeast that have a growth cycle where they grow and die if not refreshed sufficiently (but as I just posted in the other thread...enzymes will eventually have their way...but I don't see how gluten development would hasten that).
a couple notes here...slap and folds aren't likely to overdevelop the gluten, but depending on your time frame, dough characteristics, and goals, you may be able to take it too far, esp. given that within the typical window of bread making, the increasing acidity will tend to strengthen the dough, and added to both passive gluten formation, and the effect of folds, may not yield the desired extensibility at the time of shaping (which is one of the drawbacks to taking things too far early on, along with potential effects on crumb structure)...
So the main questions are what develop is needed overall, and how much of that needs to happen with S&F. Given a sufficient bulk time and folds, you certainly don't need full development early on...but as we know, it all depends on the context and the baker has to work out those details...
The contrary in fact. Early development or more specifically the oxidation brought about through mixing will retard degradation.
Thanks Michael, please explain the process so I can understand that.
So, if I am making a bread with an extremely taxing fermentation, it would be best to completely develop the dough in the initial stage? Example - my normal routine would be to mix the complete SD until most of the flour lumps are hydrated, then set it aside @78F for 5 hours. Then do a single set of S&F and BF @78F for an additional 11 hr. Then preshape, shape and proof for 1.5-2hr. This procedure produces a fantastic tasting bread, but stresses the integrity of the dough to the max. What would you do differently to keep the same schedule, but preserve more of the dough’s strength?
Dan
Disulphide bonds (GSSG) between gluten proteins make doughs stronger. Oxidation will make more of these bonds. LAB work to undo this process which then allows protease enzymes to attack gluten.
Essentially the dough has further to fall if you oxidise it first.
There are too many factors at play to assess your process.
If you want to ferment for a long time and still get a successful bread you would need to discourage LAB and cereal enzymes.
E.g.
White flour (low ash)
High gluten
High salt
Oxidation (from mixing or fermentation)
Dan, I found these two videos extremely helpful:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsCpdCsJFr4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itZMYgh5ZC0
By stretching you firstly re-align the gluten molecules, and secondly let more oxygen get into contact with them. But then the dough needs to REST a little to give those sulfur bridges time to form. The Ecole videos suggest to do this in one-minute intervals, so one minute of stretching and folding, one minute of rest, for a total of fifteen minutes if I remember that correctly (don't quote me on that, I'll have to re-watch and check). The resting is as important as the stretching, according to these explanations (the forming of longer chains of gluten molecules by the formation of sulfur bridges is what takes place during autolyse, too, so think of the short rests as a series of short autolyse periods).
Over that time, of course, the LAB start to work, too. The longer a process of kneading, stretching, folding, slapping takes, the more acidity can develop during that time. You can see in the second video how it's actually the pH that determines when the breaking down of the gluten starts. It's not the acids themselves that do that, but the acidic environment enables the enzymes that come with the grains themselves to become active and work on the dough.
A pH below 4 is the critical point regardless of how long or well the gluten in that dough was developed. Retarding slows down the LAB and their production of acids, but keep in mind that up to a point, we want the enzymes to work on the dough and make it more digestible. Like Thomas Teffri-Chambelland points out in these videos, we need to find the balance between having gluten break down just enough to make bread easily digestible (real bread, that is...), but not break down so much that it becomes hard to handle and difficult or even impossible to bake.
Hope that helps
tsp
Thanks TreeSparrow, I am interested to learn more about this, but I don’t understand French and the commentary does not explain enough.
I will cntinue to search for more information.
Dan
Hi Dan, so from my understanding, the answer to your original question: "Does fully developed gluten speed up the dough degradation process? " is:
No.
Acidity is the critical factor. Acidity develops over time (depending on temperature, amount of levain in your final dough etc), so you can also say time is the critical factor. If you do hundreds of manipulations after mixing your final dough, that takes time. So it may look as if it's the handling that speeds up dough degradation when in fact, it should degrade just as fast if you didn't handle it at all (all else being equal). Why not put some of your dough aside next time and test it.
As a side note, I'm very interested in your findings as you continue to enquire into this. For example, I'd like to know what parts of the gluten molecule those enzymes actually break up. From the video, it looks as if it weren't the disulphide bonds but other parts, so that enzyme activity doesn't even undo our gluten development but cuts the chains elsewhere. That would explain why gluten becomes more digestible by a sourdough process because if it were the sulphur bridges that make gluten hard to digest people wouldn't have practiced the technique of developing them first for thousands of years, would they?
Sparrow
TSP you asked, “Why not put some of your dough aside next time and test it.”
2 days ago I did just that. I mixed 2 identical doughs. The only exception was 1 dough (loaf A) had 3 grams of chocolate malt (non-diastatic) added to the mix in order to identify 1 loaf (darker crumb) from the other.
Loaf A was machine mixed at low speed for 4 minutes, then rested 20 minutes. Kneaded 4 additional minutes on slow and finally finshed up with 3 minutes on meduim speed. It rec’d 3 S&F over the next 5 hours.
Loaf B was mixed by hand shaggy and rested 20 minutes, then a short hand mix to finish incorporating the flour lumps. After 5 hours the dough rec’d 1 S&F.
After the above variations that too place the first 5 hours everything was identical. Both doughs Fermented (BF) a total of 16.5 hours (dough temp was 78-79F), the preshaped, shaped, proofed, and baked. Total fermentation of both doughs were 19 hours.
Conclusions - the dough thta rec’d the machine kneading was slightly stronger, held its shape better, and baked slightly higher. The crumb was a little nicer. See images below. NOTE - the darker crumb is the result of using 3g chocolate malt for identification.
The text on the crumb below was meant for the author of the bread, so it shouldn’t make sense in this post. Please disregard. The bread below is Loaf B and rec’d no machine mixing or kneading.
A big thanks to Michael, aka mwilson. Once again, you have helped me with my bread baking. In the past, I’ve posted a number of technical questions, and your answers and help have benefited me greatly.
Dan
Great looking loaves, Dan!
As for your question, whether gluten development speeds up dough degradation, you kind of answered that in your comment above: "the dough thta rec’d the machine kneading was slightly stronger, held its shape better, and baked slightly higher."
So it had better gluten development without making it break down.
Also, you say "the crumb was nicer" but I don't know whether you mean taste-wise. I guess you mean its texture. I would guess that acidity was more or less the same for both loaves?
Sparrow
The crumb was slightly better because it was more open. The taste was the same for both loaves, with only a tiny difference because of the chocolate malt. Even small amounts of brewer’s malt has a noticeable affect on the color and also the flavor.
Dan