December 29, 2021 - 3:14pm
Long autolyse turning flour brown/dark
Hello all,
I've noticed that sometimes when I do a long autolyse (several hours, just flour and water, covered bowl), the top of the dough tends to turn an unappealing darker/browning color. Is the dough oxidizing or something? Any way to avoid this? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
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but it does not affect the final dough. On another note I never do such a long autolyse [overnight] without the salt being added or at cooler temperatures.
What exactly are you looking to achieve with such a long autolyze? You must be looking for something tangible as why would you want to waste your time doing it. Of a recipe I bake weekly, I did an experiment where I autolyze the dough for 30 min, 45 min, 1 hour, 2 hours, 3 hours, overnight, etc. and checked it at each time mark, and found it to have sufficient elasticity and extensibility that I was looking for around the 1 hour mark so I had concluded that autolyzing this recipe beyond 1 hour will just be a waste of time. Someone else could weigh in on the degradation of the dough with such a long autolyze as that is beyond me.
This latest time it was per a recipe (Tartine's slab bread, from Chad Robertson's new "Bread Book"):
"We started doing an overnight autolyze for a practical reason: to give the dough a head start for our team of morning bakers. It turns out that an overnight autolyze also creates additional strength and super-extensibility in the dough and is particularly beneficial for whole grains."
But I've also noticed it other times when I've let an autolyze run long (say because something came up and I needed to wait a while or adjust on the fly).
Got it, for convenient reasons, I have done that before. Thanks.
I often autolyse freshly milled whole wheat flour (w/2% salt) for 7 hrs (60F) while the starter is on its second and last feed. It does not seem to degrade and the lean SD crumb is not gummy or pasty when baked off.
I call that a saltolyse, aka autolyse with salt and the salt will slow the amylase down so that the starches don’t excessively degrade. I’m not sure I would autolyse overnight at room temperature without the addition of salt or if without salt then place the dough in the refrigerator.