Yeasted Sweet Bread
Hi everyone,
I'm a newbie here and want to ask you guys some questions about bread baking. Recently my dad brought me some flour type 405 from Germany (the brand is Diamant) and i thought about making brioche dough with nutella filling. i followed the recipe from the website and ended up with this large loaf of strong, yeasty taste bread that can hardly be enjoyed without piping tons of sweetener on top. I know this must be some probs with the yeast since they are fresh yeast and i think i kept it frozen for quite a long time. But im not a 100% sure so any suggestion will be most helpful. Plus one more thing is how am i going save this monster cuz i dont want to waste anything?
here's the recipe (rough translation cuz i used google)
Yeast dough
Ingredients:
500 g flour Diamond Extra Type 405
30 g of fresh yeast
250ml lukewarm milk
60 g butter
60 g of sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp salt
Instructions:
Put all ingredients in a bowl and mix until incorporated. Round batter into a ball and put it back into the bowl. Sprinkle with flour and cover for 15-30 minutes. Process as desired.
Baking time:
20-25 minutes
Temperature:
170-200 ° C
Process as desired.
So what did you do to the dough after that? The dough recipe looks good but they left out all handling of the dough after mixing it together. A newbe needs a method, what to do with the dough. Did you find some guidance?
Do you have a picture of the loaf, or better yet a slice of it?
I shaped the fermented dough into a loaf and let proof before baking (at 200 C for 20 minutes). I did what every standard sweet dough recipe tells me to do except that i put in nutella filling (which i think isn't going to affect much the taste of the final product.) Though I noticed that the dough rose considerably faster than the last several times i made bread. Everything looked normal when it came out (the texture, the crumb) only the taste was disappointing. Extremely yeasty. Here's a better look at it:
I'm very inexperienced with fresh yeast as i've only ever used instant dried yeast, but 30g seems an awful lot of yeast in 500g flour. For instant yeast i've only ever added 7g yeast in 400g flour, often less, and 30g is something like 4x that amount... You also did mention it rose much faster than other breads you've made, which would correspond to more yeast than usual. With a faster rise i would also expect it to be easier to overproof, with a collapsed crumb - hard to tell in your photo. It does look dense but that could be lack of gluten development if you didn't knead it long enough as per the instruction to "process as desired".
I kneaded it for quite a long time, about 20 minutes. I think the collapsed structure may be due to the flour type, which is pastry flour but again im not sure. I'm not experienced. What type of flour do you suggest?
Trang
i guess i wouldn't go by how long I keneaded it as much as how developed the gluten was (eg windowpane test). It's remarkable how much energy you can expend pushing a ball of dough around without actually stretching it. As to pastry flour, that would explain not much gluten development, but the fact that the manufacturer provides a recipe suggests it's not inappropriate to use for bread, given a correct process.
I use all purpose flour for nearly everything at the moment, though my opinion shouldn't count for much. Seems to work fine.
I've never used fresh, but the most I've seen is 5% for a brioche in Hamelman's "Bread". That would be 25 grams fresh yeast for 500 g flour. So yeah, 6% seems high. And that brioche was 50% butter, not your 12%, so it needed more oomph that this recipe does. The other thing that strikes me is a rise of 15-30 minutes is too short a fermentation time to develop much flavor. Basically, that recipe looks like a bust as written.
Well, the recipe from the website is, well, more a formula than a recipe.
The first step
just says: Put all ingredients in a bowl and process them with a (hand) mixer to a smooth dough. It gives no directions on how long, if gluten has to be developed, ... "glatt" just means, that there are no coarse parts anymore. (You translated it with "incorporated")
For my yeast doughs I let my machine knead for almost 10 minutes.
If you tell us, what you actually did, we can help you.
Apart from that, 30g yeast (=10g instant yeast) seems too much. Also 25 to 30 minutes fermentation is too short. This maybe qualifies for an "emergency dough", but nothing you plan on doing. On a similar dough (1 less egg, 15g more butter, 40g more sugar), I use just 10g of yeast.
Also I think, the hydration of the dough is too high. From the milk and eggs you have 340g of water; not considering the butter yet.
Did you measure the core temperature, or why did you think the cake was already properly baked after 20 minutes?
Adrian
Actually i'm not really sure about the temperature since i dont own a thermometer. I just let it cool down in the oven after baking it to the brown stage and taste it afterward (the texture was fine, almost cake like). It did sound hollow when i tapped it, which i assumed it must be cooked properly.
the thing about the yeast is absolutely true, i agree. I was hesistating at first too when I thought about the ratio of the yeast and flour but risked it because i was scare that the yeast's gonna go bad very soon. (plus we dont have fresh yeast in our country so spoiling would be the last thing to do)
About the mixing procedure. Since i dont have a stand mixer i kneaded the dough by hand, probably for about 20 minutes. The dough was very sticky then, partly because the flour was not strong enough and partly because the hydration was too high (like you said). I wonder what a sweet dough should feel like or look like when it reaches the elastic-and-smooth stage.
lastly, since im desprerate with my failed loaf already and I dont want to end up with the same thing next time, I hope that you might suggest a good and sustainable recipe for sweet bread. Thanks a lot.
Trang
Form the directions, that sounds like a recipe for a quick bread, but for some reason raised with a lot of yeast rather than baking soda/powder. So don't think you're intended to knead it: when they say mix to incorporate or whatever, it means just to blend the ingredients until there are no separate wet and dry parts. Because for this kind of loaf you do not want to develop the gluten, that would make it "bready" rather than crumbly and cake like, as in Irish Soda Bread. That's probably also the reason the recipe calls for low gluten, pastry flour. By "Process as desired" am guessing they meant shape or bake in whatever kind of pan you want, even like for muffins. Funny but I just baked what I guess must have been a yeast cake, posted about it here. dough looked like this:
Did not knead or even shape it, but then mine had twice the sugar and shortening as yours, so it was self leveling In the oven. But if you just want to bake a quick, sweet bread, you might want to forget about using yeast and go with a soda/powder recipe. Again, Irish Soda Bread comes close, but there are tons of other recipes for fruit and nut breads that don't call for yeast and need not be kneaded.
You definitely do want to develop the gluten in "Hefeteig"!
Did you ever prepare Guglhupf, Reindling, Challot, ... ?
I really want to make yeast bread because i like experimenting with different kinds of textures, especially the open crumb variations. but this time i want to try to the fresh yeast with the flour to see how soft bread differs from chewy ones. I've never made quick bread (if cupcake is not counted) cuz i save all the sodas for cookies and cakes. But yeah, i'll definitely try this recipe again with reduced yeast and some other modifications. Thanks for your help.
Thank you for all your help guys. Really appreciate all the explanations. I'm going to try again with some modification to see what's gonna happen. (I'll post the result)