Complete fail with enriched dough
I tried to bake the Greek Easter bread a couple of days ago (tsoureki). I wanted to follow the recipe from Akis Petretzikis, one of the famous Greek chefs who shared a popular recipe for this style of bread. The only difference is I wanted to convert it to sourdough, here is my formula: https://fgbc.dk/1ito
I made a stiff 50% hydration starter from my rye starter, and including the final levain build included in the formula, it went through three refreshments between 100% hydration rye and being used in the dough. Mixed everything and veloped lovely strong and smooth dough, incorporated the butter, the dough was really pleasant. Left it to ferment. I knew with this sort of enrichment not to expect a quick rise, but having mixed the final dough by around 14:30, there was no movement until night at warm temperature - kept it around 28°C I think. I just left it at 24°C overnight - and still nothing! The dough was still strong, but started showing light signs of degradation. I kneaded in a packet of IDY dissolved in a splash of water, left it for 2.5 hrs, there seemed to be a tiny bit of rise - I should have left it longer to rise properly after all, but I was worried about gluten degradation after such long time, and rushed it, so shaped it, proofed and baked - and it came out super dense with a gummy part in the bottom. But that's not really important - what I want to understand is, how can there be no visible rise (≤5%) in around 20 hrs of fermentation with 46% prefermented flour? I understand enriched dough with sourdough can be challenging, but I thought having a large amount of prefermented flour in a stiff starter, warm environment and plenty of time would make it work, but the complete lack of movement was really shocking!
Ilya, could it be that your starter was not sugar tolerant?
33% sugar is high.
If I was using CY it would have been SAF Gold, not Red.
I had this thought. Does the sugar tolerance vary between starters? Can it be fixed?
I had some sugar in the levain. It was in a wide bowl so I can't be sure how much it grew, but it definitely increased in size in 4.5 hours, and inside was super nice and spongy - but significantly less sugar than in the final dough of course.
For CY - I just used what I had, which is a supermarket brand. In the recipe he uses double the amount of what I used, and for him the dough doubles in 2 hrs (I think he even says ADY, not IDY).
It also had 26% fat.
I have no experience with this but this probably calls for a very active Lieveto Madre. I don’t think a typical SD starter is going to work. But, just a guess.
Maybe try adding CY to the dough. In hopes of saving.
I see, thanks Danny! My experience with enriched doughs is very limited, so that's why I am asking... This is still less rich fat-wise than some brioche recipes, or pannetone, isn't it? That's why I thought I could get away without a proper LM and just use a stiff starter.
This is one for Michael (mwilson).
Would be great to hear a comment from Michael about this!
Thanks for your thoughts Danny, let's see what others say, hoping to learn something from this failure.
A quick glace at the recipe leaves little free water to support microbial growth. Equally the original recipe is teetering on the limits of what is possible, but since it is CY leavened this extremity is perhaps not so apparent.
Approximating free water consider:
The hydration giving ingredients and their approximate water content.
water (~100% - *1)
whole egg (~75% - *.75)
butter, (~15% - *.15)
To that, subtract water binding ingredients based on solubility.
sugar - binds up roughly half its weight in water. For simplicity you may as well consider honey to be the same, even though it contains some water.
salt - binds up roughly 4 times its weight in water, but also increases ionic strength.
Then calculate the hydration. Anything below 35% is pushing it.
Moreover, the high pre-fermented flour is a significant problem because it brings with it acidity, which affects redox and water binding.
As a rule increased acid load slows fermentation and can even bring it to a halt. Combine that with the low level of water availability and get you what you observed, no rise.
46% pre-fermented flour in a stiff dough is just too high, it is likely too oxidative.
Michael
Wow thanks so much for the explanation Michael, I didn't even know this was a factor!
Do you think this recipe is even possible to make using sourdough, or with YW (which would avoid acidity, but not the other problems)? Is e.g. pannetone dough more wet and hence avoids this problem?
You'll likely have more success if you split the formula into two or three doughs.
Your pre-ferment feed was also problematic since there was little flour added, which meant the acid developed during the previous fermentation was not flushed out sufficiently.
Panettone formulations vary, some of the first doughs are more hydrated, some less, depends on the schooling.
The first dough for Massari's panettone is equally very low on free water. Again if the acidity in the LM is too high it will struggle to rise.
That is essentially what makes a LM starter powerful, a very low acid load but a high microbial density.
The logic of low acid (low TTA) YW makes sense but you'll have to consult someone else on the practicality of that...
Thanks a lot Michael, very helpful insights! Maybe I should study some pannetone recipes to see proper ways to deal with highly enriched dough and not just wing it.
I don't think 3 refreshments is quite enough though. Cold temps favor yeasts, make the 50% hydration starter adapt to 13 C. (Used wine coolers can be found really cheap and are great for the purpose.) Drop the temp gradually (say 2 degrees at a time). Feed at the ratio of 2:2:1 (starter:flour:water) every 12h until it starts to triple between refreshments at 13C. I think for enriched doughs the Modernist Bread people suggest adding 10% of sugar to the starter to make the yeasts adapt to that.
It's an interesting exercise, but are you sure it's really worth it? :-)
Wow that's interesting, thank you for the info! I don't think it's worth it though :) maybe if I had a commercial sourdough bakery! I'd rather use a packet of IDY in addition to some starter that would just add some complexity of flavour rather than leavening power if this is what it would take to make it work on it's own.
Ilya, are you sure you want a sour flavor with a sweet bread? I am hooked on sourdough but sour and sweet don’t work for me. LM are not sour starters.
For Babka and other sweet breads. It’s CY for me.
Sweet and sour works for Chinese food, but not sure about bread.
But the above is my preference, others may disagree.
Well, in my limited experience the sour taste is not really pronounced in enriched baked goods, it's masked by the sweetness mostly. But I also don't dislike the very light acidity that comes through, I feel it's nicely balanced with the sweet taste and other flavours. It must extend the shelf life too, btw.
But it appears beyond very light level of enrichment I'm going to add some CY too in the future, for the rise...
I have made enriched,sweet doughs a number of times and I am no expert but my gut feeling is that this is a starter issue. Your starter just does not seem to have the yeast population it needs to lift this dough. You identified this yourself-now you just have to believe yourself.
"how can there be no visible rise (≤5%) in around 20 hrs of fermentation with 46% prefermented flour?"
For naturally levained doughs made with high sugar and fat, the starter has to be just about exploding after a feed. The yeast population should far outstrip the lactos in population. It should not take that long at 24C-28C to rise. What you describe sounds very much like a long,warm lactos degradation of the proteins before the yeasts could get the rise completed.
And then there's honey. 150g of honey in a weak yeast population could be enough of a push to suppress the yeasts down enough to reduce their effectiveness. Honey can have that effect.
Then there is the question of the high percentage of pre-fermented flour (46.4%). While there does not seem to be a consensus on a "best" amount, there are considerations on how to handle different amounts so the dough doesn't eat itself up. THIS is an old post but scroll down about halfway to an explanation given by ABENW11(not verified). Great explanation.
So a few suggestions:
REALLY beef up the starter.
Watch the dough-keep it in the 24-28C to encourage good yeast growth but do not let it over ferment.
Possibly try using a hybrid-some commercial yeast/all the preferment as written. This will actually tell you whether or not it is a yeast shortage involved in the failure/degradation. If using commercial yeast helps, then you know you have to work on that aspect of the recipe-improving yeast population of starter.
Good luck and bake some delicious fun. The recipe with mahlab and mastic sounds like a great flavor !
Thanks a lot for this. How do you know when your starter is ready for such a bake? Can you test it: say, feed it some ratio and it would need to double in a specific amount of time? I thought my starter was quite strong - I used recently refreshed rye starter to inoculate the stiff starter (and the rye one has been performing very well for lean bread recently), and gave it three feeds. In the final stage I can't tell how much it expanded, but inside it looked really lovely and spongy (similar to the picture in that thread, actually). It had strong gluten, and after development the dough was also very strong and shiny. So I thought at this sort of inoculation it is bound to raise the dough eventually...
If the starter needs to be fed non-strop for a week to be ready for this sort of bake, then, as I mentioned above, I really don't think it's worth the wasted flour - and I'd rather add CY - as you suggest.
While the texture of the baked bread is not good at all due to lack of rise, the flavour is indeed fantastic, you are right! Although have more mastic, I used up the mahlab and it's tricky to find, so maybe I'll just try it again next year for Easter. But hopefully I'll do some more enriched dough baking until then and will have more experience.
What do you think about a Yeast Water Starter?
I think that sounds very interesting. Would it be more resistant to enrichments than SD?
I think it would work much better. Yeast water is built from fruits and their sugars. If the YW still lacks vigor to raise the dough you could try adding some sugar to the starter feeds.
YW is a very powerful yeasted starter and it is worth a try if you are dedicated to the cause.
That's great, thanks! My YW has been in the fridge for 6 months now I think, maybe it'll come to life and won't need to make a new one - not that it's difficult. I think I'll try and make some sort of brioche dough with it in that case in the next week or two.
I got some mahlab today and wanted to revisit this recipe. I have refreshed the YW soon after this conversation, but still now it's been in the fridge for a couple of weeks. Danny, do you know the best way to ensure it's in the strongest state, and whether/how I should make a YW starter for a bake? I found a recipe for brioche with YW (but with more butter and eggs, and less sugar), and there a single poolish (100% hydration) build was used: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdv4d241PTk In Hamelman's Swiss Farmhouse bread there are two stiffer builds - but that's a drastically different formula of course.
Any thoughts about the optimal process?
I have found mahlab at mideastern grocers-Persian, Arab, sometimes Indian etc. Not usually at oriental stores. Mahlab is a very hard seed to grind so if you can get it pre-ground, it is easier to use. It also goes rancid easily due to the high oil content.
Fruit yeast water would be a great thing to use but it has the same concepts-it needs to be a strong starter.
Sometimes 3 feeds is enough but sometimes it takes a few more, paying attention to the temp-maintaining at least 26C. Early on, I thought I had a strong starter,it wasn't bad at raising bread but then I did a multi-day build. Holy cow! It got to the point where it about crawled across the counter after a short period of time and smelled very yeasty- just like I was proofing commercial yeast in a bowl.
Just take a small amount of your starter and do a series of feeds to see if it is different. It might be interesting for all your bakes.
Thanks a lot! I have a couple of shops in mind that might stock it, just need to go and investigate.
Is that a YW starter you are talking about in the second half? That sounds very promising then, thanks! I've only used it for the Hamelman Swiss farmhouse bread (and that was delicious!) which includes a two-stage build. How would you do multiple builds - any specific hydration and/or ratio to use?
I found some mahlab at an Arab shop today! So wanted to try again, and would love if you could clarify your procedure for the YW starter to maximize its strength - assuming you were talking about YW in the second half of your post?
This is triggering memories for me of the time I baked babka using Maurizio's recipe. It took forever to get any kind of rise, even at warm temperatures. It did rise eventually, but was still too dense for my liking.
I would love to know if it would work if you made the recipe using the original recipe with instant yeast. What do you think? As you say you got a tiny rise after 2.5 hours even with IDY.
I think Maurizio feeds his starter twice a day every day, so it must be supercharged compared to most of other starters - e.g. I store mine in the fridge and feed ~ every week.
The original recipe uses active dry yeast, and clearly works well!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ez2wp4eEIDY
(written up here: https://akispetretzikis.com/en/categories/glyka/tsoyreki-to-enamisi)
I only used half the amount of IDY relative to the recipe, maybe with the original quantities it would have risen properly within that time...
I kept my starter on the counter for 2 years without refrigerating. It was fed at 6AM and then again at 6PM. I finally said enough is enough :-)
My refrigerated starter is fed once every Monday, sometimes twice. According to my experience, the weekly fed refrigerated starter is every bite as active and strong as the starter that was fed twice daily for two years. I know this goes against commonly accepted knowledge, but that is my experience for what it is worth.
The refrigerated starter can be taken straight from the fridge and used to build a levain with warm (90-100F) water without any other refresh feedings. The levain is very active and seems as strong as as starter that cycles through two or three refreshes. It matures equally as fast as the RT starter if warm water is used. But generally I do refresh the starter once or twice for the heck of it.
Has anyone else had this experience?
I have also really struggled with enriched doughs, especially when it comes to the proof! Would love to hear what you've learnt to combat this
Can't tell you anything yet unfortunately - I was planning to try it again with yeast water instead (or in addition to) sourdough, and I have refresh my YW, but haven't tried yet. But enriched dough is a challenge, I think everyone acknowledges that.
Just wanted to say, I revisited this recipe with a YW starter. I fed the YW with a couple of dried figs and some sugar, it was very active. I followed the started build procedure that I found here for a brioche dough: https://brotokoll.com/recipe-archiv/everybodys-darling-wild-yeastwater-brioche/?lang=en I.e. 35g YW + 35g bread flour - let double, add 35g YW and 35g flour - fridge overnight, add 35 g YW and 35 g flour in the morning - let double. The final build close to doubled in 3 hours, then I had to step out and it was about tripled in 5 hours.
I then made the dough using the YW poolish, and also extra 50g YW in place of the water in the dough. That was around 3 pm yesterday. I then kept the dough warm all afternoon and night, and there was basically no rise again even this morning. So I'd say my YW starter was very active, and yet that was not enough to raise this dough. I now kneaded in a packet of IDY with a teaspoon of water, and this time will wait for a proper rise and won't rush it. But at least the dough hasn't started degrading yet, like it was last time with sourdough, so hoping for a good result after all. Maybe the super long "soak" (since there wasn't much fermentation to speak of) will help with flavour and texture?
Very aromatic and chewy sweetbread!
They look delicious Ilya, nicely done.