July 13, 2014 - 8:36am
Autolyse?
What difference in flavor and dough do you find:
Autolyse at 50% or 100% hydration?
1 hour and 8 hours at room temperature?
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What difference in flavor and dough do you find:
Autolyse at 50% or 100% hydration?
1 hour and 8 hours at room temperature?
I usually autolyse at the hydration of the batch of bread I'm making - all the water and flour and sometimes the leaven but no salt. 45 minutes is usually adequate. I've never noticed a difference in taste
differnet methods. 2 hrs , 1 day, 1 week in fridge
Got a feeling any dough hydrated @50 % sitting for a (long) time before levain/salt added will benefit a lot
What I have been noticing with autolyse is much less kneaing is needed to get stretchy. Half the job is already done:)
Will report back if I notice any advantages with long time stiff autolyse.
A standard autolyse of 30-60 minutes will get the enzymatic activity started providing more available sugars for your dough throughout. Further it will require the final dough to be mixed much less retaining more flavor in the final loaf. The more you mix the more potential flavor is lost.
As for extended autolyse. This is even furthering the enzymatic development. If I do an extended autolyse I salt it at 2% of the flour within (being sure to reduce from overall salt). Some call this an enzymatic pre-ferment.
This is a great article (in italian but Google translate does okay) all about autolyse. Pretty technical but a worthy read.
http://www.dolcesalatoweb.it/2013/05/giorilli-ci-spiega-la-tecnica-dellautolisi/
Josh
Josh, thank you for the link.
So good to get more detail on this, a crucial part for any dough starting its journey to the oven