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Over proofing in under an hour

Peternumnums's picture
Peternumnums

Over proofing in under an hour

Hello everyone

I have been working on Miche style poilane bread and getting good results.

However...

I began a new starter using the pineapple method until I got consistent rise and fall from the leaven using a small amount of pineapple juice each time until it got going. 

I fed the lovely twice with just water, using the equal starter to equal flour and water method, then used it for my starter. 

The recipe had 1/2 fresh ground WW and 1/2 white flour at 65% fed with normal yeast that I let slow proof in the fridge overnight. 

 

I let the fresh ground ww sit on the counter for 2 days covered before using. 

Oh. I forgot. The Wholewheat was half hard red spring sifted and half hard white winter wheat 

 

I mixed everything with water at fairly warm temperatures around 27 degrees Celcius and in under an hour the poor dough was completely over proofed and unworkable. 

The gluten structure had completely broken down and would not support its own weight. 

I'm a more amazed than disappointed but I cant figure out what went wrong? 

Maybe there was still some enzyme from the pineapple left in the starter?

Maybe I shouldnt have aged the fresh ground flour but instead have used it right away?   

Maybe I overproofed the white flour yeast preferment? 

 

The white flour was amylase free and the yeast I used was dry and proofed overnight (I had to punch it down a few times) and left it on the counter to bring it up to room temp. It was sticky by that time. Ive used fermented dough in the fridge that was there for 5 days before and it turned out great so i'm stumped. 

Anyone have any idea what I did wrong? 

 I am guessing its an enyme thing from the pineapple or the fresh wholewheat ground flour I let sit out also at fairly warm temps but not sure. 

Its mystery.

If anyone has an idea about it I would appreciate the advice. 

All the best 

Peter

pmccool's picture
pmccool

I'm sorry your dough went to pieces so quickly.

When did you begin your starter?  My impression, from what you wrote, is that it might have been just a few days old at the time you made the dough.  If so, the starter might still need some additional feedings so that its population of yeasts and bacteria stabilize.  The usual problem with a very new starter is that it doesn't have sufficient yeast population to adequately leaven the dough, which doesn't appear to have been a problem in this case. 

While it is possible that there were still some traces of pineapple enzymes present in the starter, my gut feel is that they wouldn't be present in sufficient quantity to cause damage to the dough.  I'd lean more toward suspecting some bacteria in the starter that have a proteolytic effect.  It's not common but it can happen if the starter is new enough that the beneficial bacteria haven't yet established themselves as the dominant players in the starter.  I've also experienced this with an established starter when the bacterial populations get out of balance.

My suggestion is that you continue to give your starter regular feedings for a few more days, then try again.  Hopefully, your starter will be more robust and more stable.

Best of luck,

Paul

Peternumnums's picture
Peternumnums

Hi Paul Thanks for your input. I should have stated the starter was a few months old (new for me lol). I would feed it with a little pineapple from time to time with the idea to control the ph to allow the good yeasts an environment for them to take over and thrive. I am not sure this was a good idea. I reread Marie-Claude's blog about Gérard Rubaud's style of bread making and took this excerpt from it. 

The code was 353, which meant that the flour had been milled on the 353rd day of the year, i.e. on December 28. January 6 was the day of the incident with the levain and the dough. The flour was nine days old! Not old enough to be used for bread-baking if fermentation was to last longer than 4 hours. The levain had been gorgeous until the four-hour mark, then had slumped. According to Gérard, his batch of dough had been okay because fermentation had lasted three hours. He surmised he would have been in trouble past the four-hour mark.

I would need to do some reading to grasp the science behind what happened. But I remember from my classes at SFBI that flour needs to age for about 3 weeks after milling: the oxydation that occurs during this aging period improves the stability and resistance of the proteins present in the flour. A flour that hasn’t aged properly makes an over-elastic dough which tends to grow “flat” and to stick. 

 

Peternumnums's picture
Peternumnums

What I noticed about mine, was that after mixing it definitely seemed to be over-elastic and sticky and flat. It was a mixture of rogers organic white flour  which I've had on the shelf for more than a month now so thats probably not the problem. However I had milled hard white and red wheat three or 4 days earlier and left it covered in a container on the shelf. 

 I have followed your advice which seems to be working. I am trying a reduced hydration at 80% instead of 100%.  I decided to leave the pineapple out JIC. I am now on the third feeding. The first after a very slow rise overnight looked very much like the dough that over proofed. The second feeding after a long slow rise still had some elasticity to it and held its shape better. Finally the third feeding is looking good.  I am monitoring it closely and hoping to bake with it today. Fingers crossed. 

 One thing. Do you think its safe to use half and half white and fresh ground whole wheat with a 4 hour ferment? 

Maybe the ratio doesn't support the fermentation time unless the flour has been aged more than 3 weeks?

Something else just occurred to me. 

Maybe its safer to use immediately after grinding because some of the organic compounds present within the wheat will not have had the time to form whatever compound that causes runaway overfermentation (like crushed garlic forming allicin after sitting for 10-15 minutes) that can cause that effect? 

Perhaps the mixing with other ingredients would further slow the process of creating a new compound if used right away? 

I think I will try again but only bulk ferment for 2 hours before forming into loafs and monitor carefully poking often.   

I might throw a loaf in the fridge after forming for a long slow rise for a bake tomorrow to see how it goes. 

Wish me luck. 

I hope I can figure this out as the first couple of times the bread turned out nice but I had wanted to see if I could improve on it. 

Will keep experimenting. 

Thanks again.

🙂

Peter

pmccool's picture
pmccool

You have an established starter, so it will regulate its own pH without outside “help”.

Yes, half white and half whole wheat flour will make a dough that should stand up to 4 hours or more of fermentation.  I’m assuming that both flours are made from hard, rather than soft, wheat. 

It sounds as if you had a brush with your starter getting somewhat out of balance.  Since it seems to be responding well to subsequent feedings, keep up that regime until it is back to producing the results you want. 

There have been a number of threads about aging flour, including this most recent one.  (You can find more using the Search tool (that white box in the upper right corner of the page).  Estimates vary, but the consensus seems to be that the flour is useable for at least a few days after milling and possibly for as long as three weeks.  Beyond that window, doughs made with the flour suffer until the flour has had the chance to age for upwards of three months.  I don’t pretend to know the chemistry involved, nor have I experimented with flours of varying ages.  My own practice is to use flour that is freshly ground for baking even though I’m willing to use older-but-not-fully-aged flour for feeding my starter, where dough rheology isn’t a concern.  

Paul

Peternumnums's picture
Peternumnums

Gotcha!

I am always going for a more lactic than acetic acid in my starter. 

But since cutting the pineapple, its definitely more acetic smelling. I've taken to covering the starter so its not exposed to ongoing oxygen when fermenting. I'm aiming for overripe mildly sour yogurt flavour but still havent seemed to achieve it yet. 

Anyways my current bake last night went well and I got another batch on the go. I didnt have the courage to bulk ferment for 4 hours given what happened last time. This time around, I am making a poolish out of the white and giving the whole grain an autolyze while the white ferments to see how that turn out. 

Take care 

Peter

 

Peternumnums's picture
Peternumnums

Hi Paul 

Thanks again for your input. 

I believe the link you sent me of the flour aging question confirmed my theory about fresh vs underaged wwf. 

I dont think it was the starter. I had wondered if it had something to do with the bromalin in the pineapple juice but its only a ph corrector used from time to time so the starter stays at a healthy ph for the good yeasts to thrive in. I've used my starter many times and all seemed well in this way. The only variable that had changed was the fresh milled flour that had sit for 4-5 days. 

Reading the blog someone mentioned fresh flour used right away good! Fresh flour not used right away but not given enough time to age, bad! So this seems to confirm my theory about the compound forming after so much time post milling.  

Anyways I'm enjoying learning more about my bread and starter. 

Now I'm curious what would happen if I age the flour for a few days and use lemon juice, or a spent starter that has fed on all the available food with flour that has been aged like someone from the link you shared suggested?

All the best 

Peter

Peternumnums's picture
Peternumnums

In case you were interested.

Jeffrey Hamelman answers it in in his book Bread in the oxidising and over oxidising section.

Gluten is strengthened after milling by the presence of disulfide bonds but are blocked by thiols. Both are found naturally in fresh milled flour. Oxygen stops thiols from working. 

Cheers Peter 

rondayvous's picture
rondayvous

The information in Hamelmans book about oxidation seems to pertain mostly to Patient flours.

 

Peternumnums's picture
Peternumnums

Actually I haven't, thanks for the share. I'll give it a read. 

I think it must apply to green flour as well as patent flour though.

Seems to fit given my experience so far. 

Though, come to think of it, I did sift the hard red spring, while not sifting the Hard white spring. 

UHHG! I hope thats not a factor.  

All these factors can be confusing lol 

 

rondayvous's picture
rondayvous

The consensus is that freshly ground whole wheat flour is optimal. If you don't use it immediately, it must age for about 2 weeks or more. I'm not claiming that is true or not, just what the consensus seems to be so far.

Peternumnums's picture
Peternumnums

 I'm baking again today and autolyzing the WW. Yesterday I used my hands to make my ww autolyze while today I used my mixer and it started getting what seemed to be a little too tacky.😥  So I stopped mixing and threw the mixture in the fridge hoping to salvage it. But I don't think that will work. After thinking it through,  think I finally understand what's going on with the information thats been given It makes sense now that mixing spread the thiol and they interact with the disulfide bands preventing them from forming. 

What technique I've used so far that has good results without ascorbic acid is to mix green flour until just incorporated and no more and then fold.

Thanks for the discussion. You and everyone else who offered their insight aided in understanding how thiols work in a practical sense. 

Now I hope my autolyze is ok, might have to chuck it 😭😅

Peter

 

rondayvous's picture
rondayvous

Keep it in the fridge and incorporate it a quarter at a time into another bread, or make muffins :)

idaveindy's picture
idaveindy

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idaveindy's picture
idaveindy

IMO, that top/first photo does not show over-proofing. 

I'm looking at the dough to the left of your thumb - it's as stringy as spaghetti.  I think that's damaged gluten.

But I don't know the source.  There are at least 3 possibilities that I am aware of.  

Someone more knowledgeable than me will have to interview you (back and forth questions/answers) in order to trace the source. I consider Mariana and Debra Wink to be the oracles or "bread goddesses" here, if you want to ask them.

Possibilities, as far as I know: 

1. Mechanical over-working with cutting action.  I've seen similar "spaghetti" when someone mixed in a food processor (such as a Cuisinart) for way too long.  Up to a point, a food processor can help develop gluten, but after that point, or if the dough is re-mixed after a long rest, and if it's mixed too long, it just cuts and shreds it.

2. Proteolysis.  This can happen when your starter "goes proteolytic".  I forget the fix... it might be as simple as 3 or 4 room temp refreshes in a row, or "washing" your starter, or reviving a backup. Check with an expert such as Mariana or Debra Wink.

2a. Feeding your starter pineapple juice as part of a regular feeding after it was already established might have made it proteolytic.  (Or maybe it was a high ratio feed, and the juice alone was enough to damage the main dough.) Acidic juice is recommended to be used during day 1, and maybe the next feed, when _starting_ a starter _from acratch_. 

You're the first person (in the 3 years that I've been here) who has said they fed pineapple juice to an established starter.

3. Maybe a bacterial infection.  Abe was talking about "rope" bacteria on another thread, saying it made the dough slimy and have strands that look like rope, but I've never seen a picture of it. So this is just a guess.  If this is the problem, the source can be tricky to track down. It could be in the starter, the whole wheat berries, the mill, the wheat berry containers, the flour containers, the air and surfaces of your kitchen. Again, I'm not familiar enough with this rope bacteria thing, just throwing out a possibility if the other things are ruled out.

Welcome to TFL, and good luck!

Peternumnums's picture
Peternumnums

Thanks for your thought and the welcome. 

TFL is a really great resource for answering questions. 

I think it was a combination of things I agree it probably went proteolytic.  I'm guessing the enzymes found in the pineapple (I was using frozen pineapple to feed it with) increased after each feeding. 

I also think because I was using fresh flour the presence of thiols also played a hand in destroying the gluten.

I'm still trying to figure out how much Ascorbic acid to block the thiols without messing with the flavor too much. 

I have a scholarly article I think answers the question though if you or anyone is interested. 

Here's the link 

https://www.journal-of-agroalimentary.ro/admin/articole/70859L20_Vol_XIV_2008_Codina_Georgiana.pdf

I just went through something similar following a Tartin recipe 😅using corn flour. I toasted long and low at 140 F" and the dough turned out too tacky and lost its elasticity. 

I knew enough from what I've learned so far to check and see if corn (the only variable I hadnt thought to check) had any enzymes and sure enough it has amylase 😅

I'm re-toasted my corn flour now lol 

Peter