January 30, 2022 - 12:36am
Autolyse leads to flat bread
I did some experiments with adding an autolyse to my bread recipes to increase the extensibility of my dough. The autolyse periods ranged from 30 minutes up to 2 hours. My bread doesn't spread at all without an autolyse(at 72% Hydration) when I remove it from the banneton. But adding an autolyse leads to the bread falling flat when moving it to the baking sheet. It still gets a nice ovenspring though. I think my dough is strong enough (multiple folds and slap & folds) but the dough still offers almost no resistance during shaping.
I really would want to increase the extensibility of my dough without it flattening out.
Any ideas what the problem might be or how to solve this issue?
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It sounds to me like the dough just needs more folds to give it more structural stability, not sure if autolyse has anything to do with it. Good luck!
I think about 6 to 7min slap&folds and 5 to 7 coil folds should be sufficent for this level of hydration. Or am I wrong?
I do 4 sets of coil folds and some people think that’s excessive. I also only let my dough rise 30-40%.
I would only fold when the dough spreads out, so I do not have a set of mandatory folds to do. If the dough stay upright without spreading then I do not fold it at all. In another word, the folding is dictated by the condition of the dough not by must do standards. Your problem might not have anything to do with what I suggest as it could be something else which makes baking tricky to diagnose over the net.
Autolyse with or without the levain? If with then the ferment starts as soon as the levain goes into the dough and your autolysed dough is more fermented than the non autolysed dough.
I autolyse only with water and flour.
an autolyse compromising the height of the bread. Seems to work ok for me.
Yeah, I find it strange too, but in my case an autolyse leads to a drastic flattening of the bread when moving it to the oven
I've seen various recipes calling for autolyse with and without levain. Yes, the fermentation does start right away but I suspect that it is the overall time along with the stretch and folds that are the two key variables with the type of flour being used the third.. My SOP for sourdough is a 30 minute autolyse before adding the salt. Salt gets added and fermentation continues for 2 1/2 hours more with stretch and fold steps along the way. This gives me very uniform results.