The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Can yeasted dough be retarded like sourdough?

DanAyo's picture
DanAyo

Can yeasted dough be retarded like sourdough?

Can yeasted dough be retarded like sourdough? I prefer the taste of Ciabatta with Instant Dry Yeast (no sourdough) and would like to retard both the Poolish and also the dough for scheduling. Is this possible and are there any drawbacks to doing so?

I have very little experience with IDY.

Dan

The Roadside Pie King's picture
The Roadside Pi...

To build flavor in pizza dough the amount of IDY in a formula is scaled down according to how long a cold ferment you are shooting for, for example, .16% IDY is common in 48 hr. cold ferment formulas.

alfanso's picture
alfanso

I got my feet wet with the fabulous Bouabsa baguette thanks to the postings of Janedo and dmsnyder.  0.16% IDY.  One hour benchtop bulk rise with 3 letter folds, 21 total hrs. in retard.  75% hydration with a 15% bassinage after autolyse.  Works like a charm. 

Lazy Loafer's picture
Lazy Loafer

I retard all of my dough, sourdough or yeasted. If you can get hold of a copy of Peter Reinhart's "artisan breads every day", you'll find recipes for all kinds of breads where the dough can be kept in the fridge for up to 5 days before baking! In general if you use a 'normal' amount of yeast you should put the dough in the fridge as soon as you've done the mixing and dough development. I make a poolish bread that has 1/8 tsp in the poolish, then another 1/8 tsp in the dough. The poolish ferments at room temperature but you could probably put it in the fridge once it has peaked, and use it within a day or two. For this bread I leave the dough at room temperature for a couple of hours then put it in the fridge overnight before shaping and baking. Works a treat!

DanAyo's picture
DanAyo

I appreciate all of the help. That is a good thing to know. For a select few breads I prefer the taste of IDY to SD.

Danny

7oaks's picture
7oaks

Hi Danny,

Jim Lahey has made a lot of long fermented low IDY breads including Ciabatta. His recipe is 400g bread flour (I use 00), 8 g salt, 1g IDY and 350g cool water. His first ferment is 12 to 18 hours at room temp, he says about 72°F, shape and let rise for 1 hour. He uses a pizza stone and clay baker in the oven.

I agree with others that such small amounts of yeast require a scale that is designed for fractions of a gram.

Alan

 

BreadLee's picture
BreadLee

I was just reading the new artisan bread book and that's pretty much their entire game.  Make a big batch.  Let it remain in fridge for days,  pull out dough as needed.  

Someone posted the other day about the fermentation coming to a halt after cold fridge temp is reached.  

DanAyo's picture
DanAyo

Guess what? I have PR’s book, “Artisan Bread Every Day” and didn’t even remember it. I searched my Kindle books and found it. Thanks for the referral. It looks like it is exactly what I need. Too bad I don’t remember all of the things that took me a life time to learn :-D

Danny

Lazy Loafer's picture
Lazy Loafer

I get books from the library and then realize I've already read them! We need some kind of external memory storage that we can easily access when we forget that we even know something already. :)

David R's picture
David R

I used to use a notebook for that. But I forgot to look in the notebook.

Benito's picture
Benito

I love his methods for commercial yeasted breads in this book.  I've retarded the doughs for what he recommends which is no greater than 4 days and they really do come out well.  After 4 days he believes the flavour won't be as good.

I made my first batch of pizza dough from this book last night and have it retarding in the fridge now.

David R's picture
David R

I once worked at a pizza place - their yeasted dough was made at fairly low temperatures, using refrigerated water and working pretty quickly to avoid warming it up, then kept in the cooler for (if I remember right) at least a full day before use. As already mentioned, the yeast dose was (proportionally) very small, and measured carefully.

albacore's picture
albacore

I've been doing some trial work on my pizza dough recently. I have settled on 0.06% IDY for a 24 hour pizza dough at 20C - you really don't need a lot! Of course the rates for ciabatta may not be the same as for pizza.

BTW you really need a scale that weighs to 0.01g to measure these small amounts.

Lance

David R's picture
David R

Lance: About the scale resolution... Did you mean a hundredth of a gram, or a tenth?

albacore's picture
albacore

0.01g is a hundredth of a gram. If you are weighing, say, 0.3g of IDY then this is the accuracy you need. A scale that weighs to 0.1g will potentially give you an inaccuracy of 33%.

Scales that weigh to 0.01g are not expensive these days, unless you want a pro model like an Adam or Ohaus which are overkill for this application.

David R's picture
David R

Thanks for clarifying - that makes sense.