January 24, 2019 - 10:50am
Raisins yeast water - now what?
Hello everyone!
I'm in the process of making my very first yeast water. I started last Saturday and today all the raisins were floating and if you shake the container you can see lots of tiny bubbles going up. It smells fruity, maybe a tab alcoholic.
I'd like to make an artisan loaf but I am not sure on how to proceed. I'd like to use the water directly. Do you have a good recipe for a simple white bread?
I'm just not sure if I should do bulk fermentation over night, or if it's better to put it in the fridge after shaping.
Thank you!!!
Share
... or similar (e.g. apple yeast water) into the search box and you will be spoilt for choice as to your next steps; good luck!
and not build a preferment first? Granted it is often done that way but with building a preferment you'll get to see if it's ready and firing on all cylinders before making the final dough.
For whatever reason why you prefer one way over another perhaps conduct a little experiment by mixing 50g YW and 50g flour then leave it in a warm place for 12-14 hours (YW needs warm temps). See how it reacts. If it bubbles up then your YW is ready. Then perhaps make a bread using this preferment and more yeast water. Then follow your nose by watching the dough and not the clock.
For example. Take a standard recipe...
So you take out the yeast because you're using YW. You've taken (for the purpose of testing your YW) 50g from the water + 50g flour for the preferment. Now the recipe looks like this...
Normally you'd do one or the other. Preferment or a straight swap but for this recipe do both.
Form the dough and continue as normal but watch the dough for the timings.
What I normally do from the stage you're in now is store it in the fridge. Some people too up whatever they take out but as long as there's some left and enough for the time being I'll only top up when it's run low and/or it needs a refreshment. If it's been a while since activation and the fruit isn't floating anymore then I'd replace all the fruit, keep a little of the YW and top it up. Then I'd leave it in a warm place till it's back fizzing again and the fruit is floating.
I like preferments as it's a good indicator of how strong it is before going into the final dough only to find out it isn't performing well and needed a refreshment.
Thank you for your help! I think I express myself poorly. What I didn't want to do is to make a sourdough starter using the YW, I've done a little research online and I found that lots of people do that. Although I'm not sure if that'd be exactly sourdough. I'm new to yeast water, so I might get some terminology mistaken lol
A preferment like you said sounds good. Last night I took a bit of the water (room temperature) and same amount of flour and let it ferment on the counter overnight. My house it's at 70-72F so I wanted to give it enough time to ferment. IT worked! This morning about 10h later) the dough was almost 4 times its original height. The water smelled like beer and the dough smells like a nice fermented dough. I put the YW in the fridge and I'll bake something this weekend using your advise. I wasn't sure if you could swap completely all the water from a recipe with YW.
How often do you refresh the YW?
Thanks a lot! Happy Friday!
... take a peek at this link: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/25012/apple-yeast-water-bread. Codruta makes mention of using yeast water rather than a preferment. Elsewhere in the topic are several other links worth reading if your interest is in yeast water in lieu of a levain/preferment.