Question about mixing
Newbie here with a question about mixing. Here are the ingredients we are using...
Preferment
200 gr 100% starter
200 gr AP flour
200gr water
Final Dough
400 gr AP flour
200 gr water
15 gr salt
1 tsp instant yeast
600 gr preferment
In the first batch I made, I mixed all the ingredients together except the mature preferment and let it sit for a half hour. Since this is only 50% hydration, it was basically like a hard pile of moist flour. Consistency of maybe brown sugar. When I mixed in the preferment, the dough was very easy to work with, but I felt like there were really small hard pebbles of dough after the initial mix. Even after the final shape. I could see a couple poking through the skin. Could not detect them in the finished bread and the dough, again, was very easy to mix using the slap and stretch method.
So the next time I thought I would do it different. I mixed the water with the preferment and mixed until smooth. Added the flour little by little to make a very smooth creamy paste. I then let this sit for a half hour. I fought this pile of sticky mess for 25 minutes and decided to do stretch and folds every 45 minutes till it learned its lesson. Finally got it manageable enough to get in the oven.
I actually liked the first method better as far as a final product was concerned.
I guess the thing is, I was not happy with either method for different reasons. Which part of my mixing routine should I change to get a happy medium?
With the first method, I don't believe that 30 minutes was long enough to allow the 50% hydrated dough to autolyze. When I'm working with a 50% hydration level I often find that simple things, like humidity in the kitchen, can dramatically affect the initial texture of the dough so I knead it until it is smooth, shiny and don't worry about how many kneading strokes it takes. Your final hydration level runs (by my figures) 71% so it should be pretty slack when initially handled in the fermentation stages.
I'm going to get slammed from every direction on this, but every authority I have read ("Bread, etc..." by Hamelman, BBGA [Bread Baker's Guild of America] formula standards, and so on) tells me that when you use a 100% hydration pre ferment, it should be included in the autolyze. Even though "technically" an autolyze does not contain leavening.
The same folks describe "pebbles of flour that persist through the whole process" as a consequence of not doing this.
Seems like your experience bears this out.
30 minutes was sufficient time. It was just that there was insufficient moisture to do a proper autolyze.
I don't usually work with AP flour at that hydration, but I routinely put my liquid pre ferment and final mix flour and water in a bowl, bring it together with a few strokes of a plastic dough scraper to a shaggy mass (even at 71% hydration something is wrong if it is creamy mix - double check you weights) and let it "autolyze."
That you liked a final product with these pieces in it is strictly your business, but a 71% hydration dough is pretty slack and you probably dealt with it correctly - although maybe an extra fold or two would enhance the product. I also use the same mixing method that dmsnyder uses (he explains it better, so I won't repeat it here) of "folding in the bowl." (This is also described in some - but not all - editions of the book "Bread, etc" on the mysterious page 249 under the title of "Six Fold French Bread")This is particularly helpful with very slack doughs.
But as I re-read your description, there may have been something else at work. 71% is my calculated hysdration also. It's high, but not creamy.
So, let the barrage of disagreement begin. I still say, when you have a liquid pre ferment, you need to put it in the autolyze.
Hope this helps.
I fully endorse your suggestion to combine the liquid pre-ferment with the final dough ingredients in a quasi-autolyse. Mixing the two components separately and then trying to combine them is a royal pain, especially if you are working without a mixer. Been there, done that.
The salt can be worked in later, as is the case with a typical autolyse.
Paul
Thank you for the suggestions. I am glad my ramblings were at least understandable.
I appreciate the different methods and being in the experimental and learning stage at every level, I can and will certainly try different ways of making it better.
Keith