I'm having an interesting issue with my starter, or perhaps my bread. If I use starter for high hydration breads (70-80%) that are just KA bread flour, water, salt, and my homegrown sourdough, especially if I retard them, I seem to have a gloopy mess sometimes. Usually I can hand-knead my breads for a while (accordion-style) and they eventually settle down, hold their form, and act nice. However, sometimes it seems like the gluten has trouble forming, especially after prolonged retardation (during bulk fermentation) in the fridge, and the bread doesn't want to play nice when I bring it up for baking, even with several turns of gentle folding. I still come out with nice big holes, good gelatination, and a lovely flavor, it's just I essentially have to pour the bread dough and end up with pretty formless loaves. The weirdest thing is that it doesn't happen all the time. Any thoughts?

Hi everyone,

I'm failing to find info on why whole wheat flour is said to contain little gluten, or less than other flours do.  If gluten is a protein found in the wheat endosperm, and if WW flour means WHOLE wheat, endosperm included, how come WW flour isn't the champion in gluten content?

Background:  I have made over 100 loaves, mostly using the sourdough "no-knead" meathod.  Now I have a 300W Kitchen Aid mixer on loan.  I have tried the following recipe several times:  http://www.lkphd.com/baking/2010/7/8/polish-country-rye-bread.html

My problem: gluten never seems to develop to anything even remotely like a "windowpane."  Worse still, after just 2 minutes in the mixer, the dough starts to break down, and become progressively more soupy

I have attempted the following

I made Reinhart's focaccia recipe from the BBA a couple weeks ago and it turned out very well.  Interestingly, I noticed that the olive oil and water are simultaneously mixed with the flour.  I understand that fats are typically added later in the mixing process so that the gluten is given more time to form and so the fat doesn't lubricate the gluten and prevent it from forming longer strands.

Is this the typical mixing process for focaccia?  Am I right in believing that the mixing order (combined with the dough's high hydration and generous fat content) produces the tender crumb of a well-baked focaccia?  Has anyone tried a different mixing order or an autolyse with focaccia?

What is the roll of lard or butter in a pastery dough with the dough gets stretched out paper thin like strudel? 

I am trying to make a similar dough for an Italian pastery that has to be streched literally paper thin.  I am using breadflour for a higher gluten content.  I undersand this is not typical for flaky pastery,  however, since its being streched so thin you need good gluten development.

I thought things like butter and shortnening coat flour there by reducing gluten.  So I dont understand why 20 of the versions of this dough have some sort of fat worked in, while the only one that worked for me so far was leaving fat out all together. 

The reason I ask is that when I fallow the most common form of the dough recipe, I end up with a solid shell instead of distinct seprate flaky layers.  When I fallow the odd ball versions with no fat, it works like its supposed to.

Here is the recipe, I am trying to make Sfogliatelle

3 Cups of bread flour

1 cup of lard or butter

2/3 cups water

1 tsp salt

2 Tbsp honey

And what they should look like:

 Not like this:

Here is my experience with kefir as a component used in sourdough bread making.

Summary:  When adding kefir milk/curds/whey to my typical slow-ferment (no-knead) bread dough recipe, I find the quality of the gluten to be degraded: the dough tears more than stretches compared to if I use plain water instead. I suspect that proteases present in the kefir are cleaving the gluten strands.

Background:  I have been making bread dough using the "no-knead" method and the "5-minutes-a-day (refidgerated)" method, employing regular dry yeast (with proofing), instant yeast (without proofing), and sourdough starters (including my own local wild yeast starter and Carl Griffith's Oregon Trail Sourdough Starter).  I thought that adding kefir (instead of water) to my various doughs might add more flavor.

Method:  Using a 80% hydration ratio: 100g whole-wheat, 400g bread flour (13% gluten), I compared a loaf using 400g of water to another loaf using 400g of kefir milk/curds/whey, plus 50g of water (to account for the solids in the milk).  To these, I added 1/4 cup of my sourdough starter.  Primary fermantation of the dough (first rise) was done in my cool Michigan basement for 12 to 18 hours, covered in a plastic bag.  For baking, I used the preheated dutch oven method at 450deg for 30 min, then uncovered at 375 for 20 min.

Results:  After the 12 hour rise, the kefir bread dough did not seem "over-risen" compared to the control (water) dough.  However, using kefir instead of water seemed to degrade the gluten: the resulting kefir dough was much more prone to tear, and the resulting baked kefir loaf did not have the elastic crumb compared to the non-kefir (water-only) control.

Comment:  As far I know, there is no well-established historical cultural tradition of using milk kefir to leaven bread.  Although kefir might add more flavour than water, the resulting dough and loaf seem inferior to using traditional sourdough starters with plain water in the method described above.  There may indeed be an adventage in using kefir in fermenting/levening other types of bread (using different flours), or varying the water/kefir ratio, or using younger kefir or older kefir.  Such variables may be seen as either as a headache, or an opportunity to explore.  Because these 2 loafs were prepared and baked on different days, I plan to repeat this experiment under better identical conditions.  If there is enough interest, maybe I should post photos at each stage.

Until then, your kefir-levening experience comments/advice are greatly appreciated,

JonnyP

To try to document dough development of a lean dough, I created a video of mixing some lean, 59% hydration dough in my KitchenAid 5qt mixer at speed #2 (the 2nd click). 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBZFYzeK1Vo

I'm trying to get a better idea of knead times for my mixer with respect to different doughs. Hamelman in "Bread" says 6.5 - 7.5 minutes for moderate gluten development for KAid stand mixer. He recommends 900-1000 total revolutions for moderate dough development, so with some info from fthec and KAid:

#1 (stir): 40 rpm 
#2: 54 rpm 
#3: 79 rpm 
#4: 104 rpm 

 This means:

Time (minutes)	Revolutions
0	0
1	54
2	108
3	162
4	216
5	270
6	324
7	378
8	432
9	486
10	540
11	594
12	648
13	702
14	756
15	810
16	864
17	918
18	972
19	1026
20	1080

According to the stats, I may still have kneaded for too short of a time (H. also says that doughs with hydration under 60% will take longer to develop, as will doughs that have high hydration). It really started smoothing out at about 8 minutes, even more substantially at ~13 minutes. I guess next time I'll have to push it further, and see what happens. 

Now here is a fun way to make noodles :)   

This young man does it beautifully.

http://www.saveur.com/article/Kitchen/8-Mesmerizing-Food-Videos/2

anna

EDIT: based on some feedback, I have corrected my original post. 

I set out to locate a list of protein levels in common flours, and I found a handy list, reposting for your perusal:

Flour Names & Protein Percentages

• King Arthur Queen Guinevere Cake Flour (8.0%) 
• King Arthur Round Table Pastry Flour (9.2%) 
• Caputo 00 Extra Blu Flour (9.5%) 
• Generic All-Purpose Flour (10.3%) 
• King Arthur All-Purpose Flour (11.7%) 
• Caputo 00 Pizzeria Flour (12.0%) 
• General Mills Harvest King Flour (12.0%) 
• Robin Hood All-Purpose Flour (12.0%) 
• King Arthur Bread Flour (12.7%) 
• Bob's Red Mill Semolina Flour (12.9%) 
• Five Roses All-Purpose Flour (13.0%) 
• Eagle Mills All-Purpose Flour (13.3%) 
• King Arthur Whole Wheat Flour (14.0%) 
• King Arthur Whole Wheat Organic Flour (14.0%) 
• King Arthur Sir Lancelot Flour (14.2%) 
• Arrowhead Mills Vital Wheat Gluten Flour (65.0%) 
• Hodgson Mill Vital Wheat Gluten Flour (66.6%) 
• Bob's Red Mill Vital Wheat Gluten Flour (75.0%) 
• Gillco Vital Wheat Gluten Flour (75.0%) 
• King Arthur Vital Wheat Gluten Flour (77.8%) 

Hello from Amelia Court House, VA

I am been looking at the forum and trying some of the recipes here for the past couple of months and I finally decided it was time to join.  I am very new to baking.  I have made pizza dough, rolls, french bread and a few other recipes from this site.  I think I made have had beginners luck with my first few attempts.  I am very confused about gluten development.  I make all of my dough by hand in a big bowl with a big wooden spoon.  I am not sure how log I should mix it and kneed it.  My first few attemps the dough would come away from the sides of the bowl and kind of wrap around the wooden spoon as I mixed.  The dough was pretty easy to work with and shape (not real sticky and wet).  Doing the same recipe again using the same ingredients (I weigh the flower, yeast, water etc) the dough would be very wet, sticky and almost impossible to work with and try to shape.  When I try to make bread into a baquette shaped loaf it ends up being pretty flat and will not stay round and or rise properly.  I am not sure if I mixed and kneeded too much or not enough or if there is another issue.  I would appreciate any tips.