February 15, 2016 - 5:51am
Autolyse and bread improver
Hi all :)
I have a question about autolyse and breadimprover. I only have low protein flour to work with, so I like to use a bread improver. I'd like to try autolyse and was wondering if the bread improver is supposed to be added along with the flour or after the autolyse?
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same and they all contain different ingredients. If they contain amylase then you want to cut the autolyse to a shorter time. They are easy to make and it you know what you wnat to do you can make your own dough improver that only does what you want it to do.
http://www.wissensforum-backwaren.de/files/wfb_broschuere01_e.pdf
Since he mentions that he adds bread improver as a means of dealing with low protein content it stands to reason that his is probably gluten-based and/or acidifying. I'd say that in either case he probably should autolyse.
Does your improver make your dough perceptibly stronger? As in more elastic, better at holding shape? If yes, you probably should add it to autolyse.
So far I have only used the dough improver when baking bread in my bread machine, so I actually don't know if it makes the dough stronger or not.
I had a look at the ingredients and it doesn't specify what enzyme is in there. I was planning on doing a 20 minute autolyse to start with.
Maybe I'll just have to test autolyse with and witout improver?
If you are worried about low protein/ poor gluten, then a bit of diastatic malt (if there is none in the flour added at the mill), some vital wheat gluten to up the protein to what ever level you want and some citric acid to strengthen the gluten strands is probably all you need.
I don't think I can get diastatic malt here - I'm in Netherlands.
I have been planning to get some gluten powder next time I get an order from the mill.
I had a bit of a search last night and discovered that I CAN get diastatic malt here, it's just not called that. If the grain used has been sprouted it should be good enough, right?
Sprouted grain and sprouted grain flour here in the states has been sprouted for about 24 hours util the grain just chits (the rootlets just break the skin surface). I think in the UK they call this malted or granary flour. While sprouted grain has a bit more diastatic power than unsprouted grain, it isn't nearly as powerful. Malted grains have been sprouted 4-5 days until then shoot (not the 3 rootlets) reaches the size of the length of the seed - about 4-5 days).
Making sprouted flour or making malt is very easy to do - see the Sprouting adn Malting Primer on this site here
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/43798/sprouting-and-malting-primer