Using instant yeast
I often mix my dough with my bread machine and the recipe has the salt and sugar added to the water, and then the flour on top of that. Then sprinkling the yeast in last over the flour. I want to become better at making a yeasted bread dough by hand, but I often struggle with the hydration factor. What I want to know is does the salt and sugar have to be mixed with the water or can it be mixed with the dry ingredients and instant yeast, leaving the water by itself. The reason I would like to add the water without the sugar and salt is so that I can get a feel for the right amount of water. My flours really range in how much water they soak up so my dough sometimes ends up either too soft or too stiff. I'd rather use the right amount of salt and sugar if possible. Thanks.
You can, and some will say should, mix the water and the flour without salt or yeast, and let it absorb the water for 20-30 minutes before adding the salt, yeast and sugar. It feels weird to write that because I don't add sugar to my breads, but I don't see any reason why the sugar should be added to the water other than it might not dissolve properly if added to the hydrated dough.
Hi David, thank you. Normally I wouldn't add sugar, but I suspect one of the flours I am using doesn't have the enzyme required to break down the starch, in order for the yeast to feed properly. I thought I would try adding some sugar to see if it makes a difference. I am working on the dough today so I appreciate your response.
you should add ,6% (by weight of flour) of white diastatic malt to the flour - not sugar. Leave the sugar, salt and yeast out of the autolyse so the flour can soak up as much water as it can. Sugar and salt both steal water from the mix. If you want, you can add a small amount of additional water to the salt and sugar to help disolve it and then squish it through the autolysed dough with your fingers to incorporate it. How long you autolyse depends on the flour. I use 1 hour for bread flour and up to 4 hours or more for whole grains. If longer than 4 hours then it goes in the fridge for a cold autolyse. The autolyse should free up the natural enzymes to break down the starches in the flour and give them a head start to stay ahead of the LAB and yeast.
Happy baking,
Thanks dabrownman. Does the sugar alone not provide enough food for the yeast to get a decent leavening power? The bread I am trying to bake today has very little starch in it (flour doesn't contain much starch), which is the reason I ask.
Dabrownman can probably elaborate on this more, but basically, malt will add a hit of enzymes that will break the starches in the flour down into sugar, and will keep doing that until the dough is bread.
Adding sugar just provides a small amount of yeast food that may disappear quickly, and, as already mentioned, will steal water from the yeast. Adding a lot of sugar to a dough will provide more food, but also rob more moisture, thus inhibiting the yeast more than helping it. Adding diastatic malt powder does not add the same problems that granulated sugar does, while still providing a good solution.
I'm really curious, though; what flour are you using that has so little starch in it? Most flours are mostly starch; the only exception I can think of off the top of my head is vital wheat gluten, but that's usually only added in small amounts along with other flour. I'm interested to hear what you're using.
For reference, diastatic malt powder can be purchased at King Arthur's website. I'm sure there's other good sources, but that's where I got mine.
I am using a combination of wheat protein isolate which is basically VWG and oat fibre. There is some fermentation, but not enough to call what I am making "bread." I thought of adding 1 T of sugar to see if I can get more action with the yeast. I might try again tomorrow. The malt I will try with my other flour that contains a lot more starch. Although I almost positive that the missing element was the enzymes. The higher starch recipe was WPI, oat fibre and tapioca starch. I didn't get anything resembling bread with that recipe either.
That's a pretty radical departure from classic breadmaking. I wonder if using chemical leaveners rather than yeast, and making the process more like a quickbread or batter bread would work better in this case. Also, I wonder what the balance of elasticity versus extensibility would be in the WPI and how that might effect the rising ability of the dough. It seems like the kind of thing where there might be more glutenen than gliaden, and the dough might be so strong that it can't rise well. Just a theory, but maybe a factor to consider in recipe development.
I imagine it has a texture that resembles seitan, although I don't know how the oat fibre would effect that. What is the final product like? Really chewy and fairly dense?
Tova industries makes two kinds, one is like vital wheat gluten and the other I haven't quite learned how to use it. They don't really provide details on what it is used for so it is hard when you are trying to figure out how to use it on your own. It doesn't really act like Seitan when you mix it with oat fibre. It functions more like a dense commercial light rye bread. Although it lacks the flavour. I haven't done much to try to make the flavour more interesting yet. Right now I am fooling around with the recipe to try to get more leavening action, while still trying to keep it low carb.