The Fresh Loaf

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Whole grains/rye - Put them to autolyse or in the levain?

cybrok's picture
cybrok

Whole grains/rye - Put them to autolyse or in the levain?

I am about 1 month into sourdough, and have about 15 different tests I want to do (that's what happens when a process engineer does well, anything).

I don't like my bread sour, so I usually use a young leaven using a mature starter (Robertson style, check Meyers Madhus vid on Youtube). To optimize time and flavor, I mix my dough's flour/water and let it autolyse, because why not. I have been using autolyse since I started baking, before SD. This autolyse will mostly benefit the whole grain/integral/rye/wheat germ/other addition rather than the white flour balance. 

I've been reading "Lactic Acid Fermentation in Sourdough" thread. My brain melted a bit. The "Everything happens faster with whole grain." part got me thinking: What if instead of adding my 10-20% higher extraction grains to my dough I add them to the leaven. It should boost the bugs activity right? 

Downside would be no autolyse for the whole wheat/rye. I can see the bread being a bit less sweet, but anything else?

Anybody already tried that?  Notice anything else?

cybrok's picture
cybrok

I guess the question is unclear. Let me rephrase that: To your knowledge and experience, would the bread overall benefit more from the whole wheat/rye being in the leaven (for yeast and LAB activity)  or autolysed in the dough (for taste/sweetness). 

I just bought some whole wheat flour (just had integral before) and tried exactly the tartine loaf. I usually only had white flour in my leaven, now I have 50/50. After 2 hours of bulk fermentation I definitely see a difference in rising power.

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

like I do.  I too prefer a sour bread as opposed to the weakly sour notes of a young Robertson levain.  There are several reasons to do an auto;yse.  One is give the enzymes, amylase and protease, a head start to do their thing and another is to get the proteins the 2 proteins that form gluten wet so that they can start forming gluten and thus reducing the mixing time required and hopefully cause less oxidation.  The later is more important in commercial bakeries where industrial mixers might cause a problem.  The last thing is that there is more residual sugar in the dough from the amylase activity so the bread browns better too.

The other thing to remember is that the bran in the whole grains provides a buffering effect for the LAB that allows them to continue to reproduce and produce acid at a lower pH than they normally could which makes for a more sour bread inn the end.  Along with the water in the levain which softens the bran leading to less gluten strand damage and a higher lifted and lighter loaf, the acid in the levain also breaks down and softens the barn as well. 

What I do is combine the two ideas into a modified one that is better then the two.  I sift out the bran in the whole grains and use that to do a 3 stage levain build over 12 hours and then retard the levain for 36 hours.  This makes makes the buffering effect of the bran work and the 36 F also allows the LAB to outproduce the yeast in the levain 3 to 1 over long periods making the LAB to yeast ratio increase which also makes for more sour levain and resulting bread.  

Then I autolyse the high extraction of the remaining portion of the flour that had the bran removed and any other flour in the dough so that the gluten an get an head start along with the enzymatic activity.

With this process I get a more sour bread, one where the bran has been wet in an acid environment the longest to soften it making for a loaf that is lighter, more open crumb and better risen that it normally would be.  You will be amazed at how much the better the resulting bread really is in the end.  Now if you sprout half the whole grains in the mix first and then dry, grind and sift the the bran out for levain builds,  you are really on to a the best looking, most nutritious and fine tasting bread there is.

It is all science and math in the end:-)

Happy baking 

cybrok's picture
cybrok

I think you misread, I like a less sour bread.

That being said, I still learned from your post, which is the most important. If I know more on how to make a bread more sour, I know more on how to make a bread less sour. I didn't catch the full extent of the buffer effect of whole grain until now, thanks for that. If the bran is responsible for the buffering effect, I should sift it as you said, but put it in the autolyse instead, and leave the high extraction in the leaven.

On the other hand, I am not sure if the increased acid production due to the buffering effect would be as noticeable in a young leaven, which would be good for me (would need more testing, I still want to check the rising/pH profile of my leaven).

An Art AND a Science. Like most things I have a passion for.

Filomatic's picture
Filomatic

So I've been working toward your methods, and have read several of your posts, not quite understanding everything, but wanting to experiment, and took the following steps with the following outcome.  The recipe was Hamelman's mixed starter levain.

1.  Made a batch of your rye starter for use and longterm storage at 91F over 3 builds.  It is in the fridge, and I have not baked with it yet.  Can't wait to see how it performs.

2.  With a rye starter I made as an experiment that has just been sitting unfed for a month, made one levain, and with white flour starter from fridge made the other levain using mostly sifted bran from KA WW.  I found the bran very hard to sift, as there seems to be very little bran.  Both levains were proofed at 91F for about 12 hours, and then put in the fridge overnight.

3.  The final dough was mixed with the levains, and using the sifted WW for that component, and left for a 45 minutes or 1 hour autolyse at 91, then mixed in the KitchenAid.  I noticed that the dough never released from the bowl during mixing--more like cake batter.  Against my instincts I didn't add more flour, but have wondered about this ever since.  The dough was proofed for 5 hours at 91F, with folds once each hour.

4.  At the end of the process, the dough, perhaps partly due to its temperature, was too runny and unformable to prepare for a final rise, despite the folds.  I gave up and put it in the fridge.  Several hours later, I decided to form cold into boules and place in floured banetons.  I believe they fermented about 24 hours.  They were not huge, but they had grown.  I was very relieved that they even released.  I didn't let them come to room temp, baking straight from the fridge.  This was because I was worried they would just spill out if I did.

5.  I baked them differently, and got interesting results.  One was in a Dutch oven, and the other on a stone.  They were both pancake like, but I was very impressed with the open, gummy crumb (in a good, SD way).  The stone one browned nicely but again was a bit flat, and had a delicious flavor, lightly sour.  The dutch oven one never properly browned, but was still quite tasty, and had more sour flavor.  I'm thinking that with the steam rocks underneath the dutch oven, perhaps it messed up the temperature.  Usually breads get too dark if anything.

Overall, although this was at bottom a failure, I got some results that I was very happy with, including great flavor, some sourness that I haven't had since I first propagated the starter, and really interesting SD crumb.

So my questions are mainly:

1. How can I get more bran more easily?  I don't have a mill.

2. Can you identify where I might have gone wrong in getting a proper structure?  I'm still unclear on when the levain should be removed from heated proofing and moved to cold fermentation, and I don't know if 5 hours of folds was excessive (I did it that way based on Trevor's video - http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/45428/video-and-question), and I don't know if 91F for everything was really advisable.

cybrok's picture
cybrok

To help your experimentation, you should read on Factorial DOE (design of experiments), you had 2 levains you baked in different ways, so really you don't really know what did what. You should change only 1 variable at the time. In the industry we sometimes use half-factorial when time and money is an issue, but for home baking I wouldn't suggest it. 

For instance, I made a recipe for 2 loafs, but fermented them differently. Next time I might ferment them the same, but cook them differently like you did. I might change my recipe a bit between batches, but the important thing is that there is only 1 variable changing between your 2 loaves. 

As I said, when engineers bake...

Filomatic's picture
Filomatic

I take your point, and there were far too many variables and experiments here.  But I'm ignoring what happened with the dutch oven loaf for the purposes of my questions.  I've never tried to bake two different ways at the same time before, nor do I intend to do so again, but was curious to see whether one or the other would work better with this already troubled dough.

Put another way, based on the performance of the dough, I'm not disappointed with the result.  I expected much worse.

Since I wrote my post, I've looked at several postings by Trevor, and based on his approach, I regret starting with such a wet dough.  I'm going to experiment with his handling process.

Here's a post about his his theory/approach on dough hydration - http://www.breadwerx.com/how-to-get-open-crumb-from-stiff-dough-video/

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

doing the autolyse at 91 F will really crank up the enzymes and you really don;t want them running wild in the dough with the rye starter and a bran levain built at high temperatures at least not for very long

You van buy bran at health food stores or Whole Pay Check...eerrr.....Foods

I'm not surprised you had a flat outcome,gummy crumb with a 5 hour bulk ferment on top of the hot autolyse and really long cold proof.  Yo will note after 2 hours of gluten development at room temperature using the rye starter and bran levain, I skipped the bulk ferment pretty much and went straight to the long cold final proof for the reasons you  experienced. 91 F has its place in starter and levain builds and maybe for a 1 hour final proof but, too much of a good thing for LAB and yeast ratios and making sour but is not a good thing form long periods of enzymes running wild in the dough  I'm also not surprised you got your sour back too!

Happy baking

cybrok's picture
cybrok

We could also separate the question by flours:

- What will WW change to the levain?

- What will rye change to the levain?

cybrok's picture
cybrok

Or in the autolyse. For instance: I think in my next batch, I will add rye to the levain because:

- The pH will drop, helping the rye

- Rye has a lower gluten, therefore will not benefit from the autolyse as much.

.This is from my current understanding, and could be completely wrong, but it is the hypothesis for my next test.

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

That allows the pH is the levain to go lower than normal.  Rye bread need the acid in SD to to keep the amylase int he rye from breaking down the dough structure in the bread.  If you autolyse rye flour that just lets the amylase break down the structure of the dough and why and autolyse usually isn't done for rye breads but a higher % of pre-fermented flour in larger levains is common fr rye breads

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentose.

Happy baking

cybrok's picture
cybrok

So basically, my idea to put the rye in the leaven was good. (I write levain a lot, French Canadian...)

cybrok's picture
cybrok

If the resulting bread is too sour for me, I'll keep the rye out of both the levain and the autolyse.

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

bad taste buds:-)  In whole grain breads the powerful taste of the whole grains can overpower a weakly sour mix and more sour is needed to balance the taste and actually taste the sour.  For rye breads every bit of acid is necessary to counteract the effects of rye amylase that will produce too much sugar and destroy the rye crumb structure.  Some folks say you shouldn't final proof rye in teh fridge for a long time but i have found the cold pretty stops the amylase action and the brad tastes better and has a better crumb with a long cold proof.  You just have to watch it so that it doesn't over proof since rye is not very forgiving when it come to being over prooded.

Matt H's picture
Matt H

I would partially cook the whole grains and add them to the dough during the final mixing, or even after autolyse, the way Robertson encourages in Tartine Book 3.

I have made some inedibly sour rye breads! Usually after an overnight ferment.

cybrok's picture
cybrok

Yeah the porridge breads. Something else to try. Somewhere down the road there is also sprouted and fermented grains... and maybe malted grains. 

My tests will probably last for the rest of my life.