Wet dough
I have been seeing pretty amazing Pugliese bread on this forum. Sylvia and Varda - wow!!!!
I tried to make a loaf this weekend and have a few questions that I am hoping someone can help answer.
I made the recipe from the Bread Bible. First, this was a very small loaf. I used an 8” banneton and it reached somewhere between 1/2 and 3/4 to the rim before I decided that it looked at risk of collapsing. When I carefully took it out of the banneton it pretty much collapsed. It got some oven spring but the crumb while holey was tighter than I wanted. I know it’s a small loaf and some have doubled and tripled the recipe which I will do next time but I want to figure out why it never rose and collapsed.
I mixed it in my Bosch universal using the dough hook. It never pulled away from the sides of the bowl because there wasn’t enough dough in the bowl to start.
could it be that the dough never developed enough to hold the structure? Maybe I should do my next one by hand??
It was chewy and delicious the way I hoped it would be but I would like a better rise with more holes.
I followed the recipe exactly. No changes. The biga was a counter rise and about 16 hours in the fridge. I used a proofing box set at 78 degrees. I also used diastatic malt.
Does any one have any guidance for my next attempt?
It's too bad that that mixer (apparently quite a good one otherwise) doesn't quite reach when the amount is small. Maybe working by hand on small recipes is the simplest solution?
Or - double the recipe? ?
I will for sure double the recipe. Could it be the dough wasn’t properly developed and is the reason it never really rose in the banneton? Or should I have used non-diastatic malt instead of diastatic?
Which did the recipe call for?
it doesn’t specify. Just says malt powder.
I have had similar issues making particularly small or very wet dough's in my KA mixer. Never developed the gluten properly. I switched to using hand mixing for anything 70% hydration or more, combined with "stretch and fold" or "Rubaud method" for mixing/gluten development. Plenty of video's out there showing both methods.
I am going to try again this weekend. Will do a bit of research and try hand mixing.
Thank you!
If a recipe calls for malt powder they almost certainly mean NON-diastic. Most commercial flours already have a bit of diastic malt. I grind my own flour from hard wheat so it doesn't have any additives and I might use 1/4 tsp diastic malt powder. Diastic means it is an active enzyme that will start digesting the flour and delivering a bit more sugar for your yeast to eat --- but you don't want to use very much diastic malt or your dough will basically turn to a gooey mess without any glutin strength. Even one teaspoon of diastic is way too much. You only need a pinch and you only need it at all if you are using flour that doesn't already have some (or if you are making pretzels which is one of the main reasons you find diastic malt for sale).
Non-Diastic malt is what you want if you want to add that malty flavor (you know, like chocolate covered Malt Balls) I love that Malt flavor and I use a lot of non-diastic malt in waffles and in my whole wheat and seed breads.