I recently obtained a slug of Belgian (Chimay) brewer's yeast to use in baking.  I have a sourdough culture I started from scratch some time ago, and read up on starting a culture from brewer's yeast in a similar manner.   I did a pretty astute job of isolating the yeast from the trub in the slug I had, and sure enough, the starter took off about eight hours later.  I made my first batch of preferment using this starter a day later.  I let it ferment at room temperature for another 12 hrs, then put it in the fridge and made the dough the next day.

I skipped the yeast on the final dough, as I wanted to get all the Belgian yeast flavor I could.  After mixing the dough I let it sit and ferment at room temperature for a couple hours (as suggested by Peter Reinhart in Artisan Breads Every Day's San Francisco Sourdough recipe, which was the basic recipe I used, substituting my starter for the sourdough starter).  The dough then went in to the fridge where it remained for another 20 or so hours.  I pulled out a portion of the dough for one loaf, noting that it had not really risen in the fridge.  This ball of dough sat in a bowl on the counter and did nothing for the rest of the day.  When I woke up the following morning, about 18 hours after I took it out of the fridge, it had come to life.

So I made a boule, let it proof a couple more hours, and baked it (450 on a stone, steamed at the beginning).  It was about as I expected - denser than it should have been, and also extremely rubbery - which I'll attribute to overdevelopment of the gluten during the long fermentation.  All in all, not bad though - good interesting yeast flavor - actually tasted like Chimay a little.

While I was doing all this I took out the rest of the dough and started proofing.  It did the same thing and didn't really rise.  I didn't want to let it sit all night again so I baked about 10 hrs later.  Lackluster results.  The very wet dough did not rise up once formed, making it impossible to score.  Though it rose in the oven, since it was unscored it was cavernous inside.

So I started another set of preferments - one for pizza dough and one for bread.  I let them sit out and ferment at room temperature for about 18 hrs, hoping to get the yeast a little more active.  I came back to mix the final dough and found the preferment had acquired a very *intense* odor.  In the final dough (which again I let ferment at room temperature for 2 hrs for the bread, 4 for the pizza dough) I can only describe this smell as goat cheese-like.  I am excited to bake this bread, though as I sit here the bread dough is in my fridge, not having really risen after I mixed the dough yesterday.

What's this smell? Did my preferment get infected? I probably did not supply enough information along the way - any feedback about getting naturally fermented dough to rise right would be much appreciated.