The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

When does the dough rise during baking?

Miller's picture
Miller

When does the dough rise during baking?

This is not a matter that I face, but I'll try and describe it for you.

I always thought that dough rises during baking in the first few minutes (15 to 20 minutes?). The experience that was described to me was that the dough begins to rise in the oven in the latter half of baking. This apparently happens irrespective of whether the dough is baked in a covered container or not and in either case a temperature resistant glass container is used for the baking of the dough.

The dough is a mixture of plain and wholemeal flour.

Have you had a similar experience of delayed oven rise?

DanAyo's picture
DanAyo

Miller, seeing is believing!

The dough will rise only is the very beginning of the bake. The main reason being that once the dough rises to a certain heat, the yeast die. 

Use THINK LINK for best viewing.

If you have time and are inclined, you can browse through a long list of videos and find Time Lapse videos of in-oven bakes. 

Danny

Miller's picture
Miller

Thank you for the link. I think I have regained my sanity. I have been promised time lapse photos of the bake where the dough has an oven spring in the second half of baking and I accepted the challenge!

The other videos were also very instructive too.

idaveindy's picture
idaveindy

If you start with a cold oven (no preheating), then I suppose that the oven rise could theoretically  occur in the 2nd half of the total time that the dough is in the oven.

ciabatta's picture
ciabatta

Yeast activity is not the only thing causing the dough to rise.  Yeast activity increase as temperature rises until about 100C to 120C.  Then the yeast dies.  But at the same time, gas expands as temperature rises, so existing air bubbles will increase in volume all along the same time and even past the end of yeast activity.  AND water starts to boil at 100C, creating more gasses which continues to expand as temperature rises.   At some point, the heat crusts the dough and limits this expansion.  In a higher hydration dough, there is still a lot of moisture remaining, gas pressure builds up inside the dough and the loaf will start to balloon to a point when the crust is so set it cannot expand anymore. steam continues to leave the hardened crust slowly.   190C-210C is the typical range of internal temp when the bread is done baking.  

I agree that the expansion typically happens in the first 1/3 - 1/2 of the bake. I have seen some secondary expansion that happens more toward the middle of the bake though. where the score further tears or the bread balloons up.

colinm's picture
colinm

And there’s even more going on than that. I have seen other similar numbers elsewhere but according to The Bread Builders p 94, 25% of the expansion is due to the existing gas in the cells, 20% is due to carbon dioxide coming out of solution as the temperature rises (think Champagne), and a bit less than 50% is due to the boiling of alcohol into the cells. 

Miller's picture
Miller

Thank you all for the replies. It's amazing what a simple-looking thing like a loaf of bread involves.

Hopefully I'll have some photos to show what I was told.