April 24, 2015 - 9:01am
Advice needed for beer bread
This week I made my third beer bread. Not a stellar result. It was quite sour after a four-day bulk fermentation (two on the counter, followed by two days in the fridge). The first two beer breads also took a long time to rise and the dough expansion was not great. This time, dough never got to an optimal rise, in my opinion, but the oven spring was respectable.
Next time, I plan to leave out the beer for a few hours to warm up before I mix it into a dough. Could the cold temperature of the beer be negatively impacting the rising action of my sourdough starter? That's my guess, but I have no idea if I am right about that. Photo and more details at http://108breads.blogspot.com/2015/04/bread-number-74-first-try-with.html.
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What recipe calls for that long a bulk ferment? Here in AZ you would have goo after 1 day.
I have a Guinness bread baking today that had 2 hour gluten development ,1 hour hour bulk ferment, 3 hour bulk retard, retard 1 hour warm up for shaping them a shaped 12 hour retard. with a 2 hour warm up before baking, 22 hours total. Will post it later today
I make a lot of spelt & ale loaves and have found I need much shorter bulk ferment and prove times than, say, a standard wholemeal loaf. It's the malt in the beer that speeds the process, so it's best not to go by timings but by when you think the bread has achieved enough volume increase.
Can I suggest you take a careful look at the recipe? Is there a typo somewhere? Or maybe try a different beer bread recipe, so you can compare the two?
What happens with my beer bread dough is that it expands so much slower than any other dough. I'm not using anyone's recipe, just substituting beer for water in one of my own recipes. Usually, a first rise can be eight to 16 hours, depending on the amount of starter and the room temperature. But the doughs with beer seem to rise at a snail's pace, taking more than 24 hours to expand much and then they never reach the puffiness of other bread doughs.
I wonder whether the super-cold beer is slowing down the process and my experiment will be to bring the beer to room temperature, by just leaving it out on the counter, before mixing the dough.
Totally open to any other suggestions.
a 2 hour autolyse with the dough flour and beer, no slat no levain, and this warms things up after 2 hours. I haven't noticed anything being slower with beer for the liquid. Today's bake only had 10% prefermented flour but had 24% whole grain that was all sprouted flour
Does the beer contain any? It's often listed as E220... Check the label. If-so, maybe it's killing off the other yeasts (sourdough?)
-Gordon
Let it come to room temperature. I always use room temp beer and never have any issues. Check out my latest post Guinness Onion Rye. No rising issues at all with that one.
There was nothing like E220... listed on the beer label.
For the next bread, I took the beer out of the fridge and put it in a bowl of warm water for a few minutes. That helped a lot. More details for bread #75 included adding an autolyse and putting in some cornmeal.
Very pretty and tasty.
Looks great. I always use room temp beer and it never fails. If you want to crank it up a notch...throw some sharp cheddar cheese in there :O
being that I'm married to a German, I sometimes succumb to peer pressure. Might I suggest using a wheat beer next time for your recipe and see how it compares? Our beer of choice is Erdinger Weissbier. German beer adheres to the German purity law in that there can only be water, hops, malt, yeast and in the case of wheat beer the malt has to be more than 50% wheat malt.....sounds like bread making doesn't it. Your Stella being Belgian doesn't comply with this law...not to say they don't make nice beers but they are Anheuser Busch and looking at the ingredients it says "non malted grains"...who knows what those are?
Erdinger is actually the ONLY beer I like to drink. Of course I usually mix it with some Sprite (called a Shandy) because I'm a lightweight. Last fall when in Germany we took the tour at the brewery and we all belong to the Erdinger Fan Club.
Your loaves look great!
I will have to try the cheddar idea. Sounds like the cheese will insert a nice twang into the taste.
As for the beer information, I am very grateful to you. Usually my husband buys craft beers. I do not pay attention to beer or labels because my average beer consumption is one craft brew a year. The next time I make a beer bread, I will definitely be more careful about the beer - and its ingredients - that get added to the dough. Thanks!