February 21, 2014 - 6:09pm
Trouble incorporating sugar
In my pretzels, all of the hyrdration is in the poolish. When I later incorporate the 2T of brown sugar into the final dough...I have A LOT of trouble getting the sugar to incorporate and almost inevitably find small lumps despite doing my best to mix all the dry together first.
Any suggestion? Should I switch to a liquid sweetener like molasses?
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and keep the same flavor for the pretzels.
It will dissolve and "melt" on top. Try it an hour before blending the poolish with the dry.
Is it a lot of sugar? If not I bet subbing molasses will work or barley malt syrup.
alternately you could steal just enough water from the poolish to melt the sugar in. Poolish will be a touch stiffer but if its 95% instead of 100% hydration I'm sure there wouldn't be much noticeable change.
Enjoy those pretzels.
Josh
With liquid sweetener you'll have the same problem: You would add more liquid.
2T is lots of sugar, but I imagine you've already scaled up for selling them later. You could use sugar powder. Because of the higher surface, it's much easier to dissolve.
Is there too little Maillard effect without the sugar?
You know...I've been wondering if the 2T is too much sugar....
I think the recipe has about 630g of bread flour at around 55% hydration. The 2 Tablespoons of sugar seemed fine...until I added diastatic malt extract (powder). My WORD. That dough puffed RIGHT up. Which got me wondering...do I have too much food for the yeast now??
Mini...I LOVE the sprinkle idea. That is such a great approach. THANK YOU!
are you using in the recipe?
either 1.8% malt or 1.8% brown sugar on the flour weight. that would be 11.4g not both together. Tablespoon of sugar is about 15g-16g.
I've been adding 2tsp or 1.2% of DME to the recipe.
This batch...I reduced the yeast and kept the DME at 1.2% (2tsp).
The flavor is still good and the dough did not POOF like last time. HOWEVER, those that retarded overnight in the fridge did puff a bit (shown right). They were very soft out of the oven, too bready for me. BUT...I wonder if after an overnight or all day out at the farmer's market they will toughen up a bit?
The set that went straight to the freezer...(shown left) these were very chewy out of the oven. But again, will they turn into rocks in a few hours? Should I add more fat to soften them?
My biggest concern...I took the advice on here about using a hot lye solution....which was making my pretzels fall apart.
Instead, I did the 2Qt.s COLD water and 30g of lye...and just a quick dunk (6 seconds) as suggested.
The results? The color is NOT dark enough and not consistent around the pretzel. They were baked at 420 for about 17 minutes.
And whats with all these striations in the crust?!
Do I need to make the lye more concentrated??