Old bakery recipes - Having some issues
My great grandparents owned and operated a bakery decades ago. Over Christmas my mom showed me their old cookbook with their recipes used at the bakery. I'm having a couple issues in trying to get them to where I can try to duplicate them in my own kitchen (in much smaller batches). I'm a novice in breadmaking, so that does not help things!
- These are from a large bakery, the recipe and amounts are for HUGE batches. Like 90lbs of flour in some of them. Most of the ingredients are given in the amount of pounds and ounces needed. How can I go about reducing these to a reasonable batch to make at home, is it just as simple as taking 1-2% of each measurement? Or am I missing something that could throw everything off?
- Most of the ingredients are obviously pretty simple. One I am having trouble with, "Instant dough", several recipes call for a few pounds of this to be added to the mix. What is this? Adding dough to dough? It's not yeast, as they already have that specified. These recipes are 80+ years old, any ideas on what they may be asking for here?
Any thoughts? I'd love to be able to reduce everything down and make an updated cookbook to give out to family members.
Thanks in advance from a brand new forum member!
Could it be this? https://www.wp-haton.com/solutions/instant-bread-production-line/
The Instant Bread that is referenced in the link Gary provided looks like a self-contained bread production line where the hardware, ingredients and training are provided by the company. I couldn't find any list of ingredients in their product but it was meant to be added to a given weight of flour and water for a given amount of product produced.
I don't know how long the WP Haton company has been around. Was that particular recipe a high volume product such as sandwich bread and could it have been a more recent recipe?
Are you translating these recipes from a different language? I ask because an old baking trick is to use old dough in a new dough to give the bread better flavor and texture and this has had many names. Maybe your relatives called it "instant dough"? I might be reaching here.
Good luck and have fun!
Thanks for your insight! These are all in English. My great grandparents came to the US from Denmark, but not really sure if anything originated from there. I think you might be on to something with the old dough or starter dough idea though. The Hard Roll, Cracked Wheat, and Wheat bread recipes all contain it. Oddly enough, not in the Rye or soft bun recipes.
Instant dough sounds like old dough. As for reducing the amount just keep all the ratios the same.
Welcome to TFL. Looking forward to seeing what you make of the recipes.
Old dough also means Biga.
Old dough would normally be exactly that. A piece of old dough left over from the previous bake. I'd say old dough and pate fermentee are closer with a pate fermentee being more purposefully built for the recipe ahead. Biga is normally reserved for a low hydration poolish. Similar in hydration to old dough minus the salt. Very similar and of course with a lot of these preferments there will be some crossover in terminology. A biga, old dough and pate fermentee can be used interchangeably. Well that's how I understand it. I opted for "old dough" as that was closest to "instant dough".
I'd probably categorise them like so:
1: Old Dough - Non Specific (unless one is making the very same loaf). A bit of dough leftover from previous bake.
2: Pate Fermentee - Exactly like old dough but specific. Built especially for the bake and it's in the final dough stage.
3: Biga - Like a pate fermentee excluding the salt. Then again a traditional Italian biga is quite different as well. Much lower hydration.
Old Dough and Pate Fermentee will also have more yeast in it and will be further along the fermentation
Hi onions its a pity you didn't put a few details about yourself against your Avatar it does help as an introduction, especially where abouts in this big wide wonderful world you are in. Looking at mine you will see i'm in Perth Western Australia . also worth mentioning is those that have responded to your posting have also filled in their avatars, it appears that new members and people seeking assistance either aren't aware of the facility or just dont want to share any of their info!
I might add that this can and does affect willingness to respond sometimes!
The era you are talking about is one that i'm quite familiar with as when i started my baking apprenticeship we worked in Lbs and ozs and quite often the dough formulas / recipes were written up requiring 600lbs of Flour its also the era when Instant doughs were first coming to prominance .
Instant doughs were doughs that had the " NEW " bread Improvers that allowed bakers to skip the Bulk fermentation period. it might appear in your notes as "Yeast Food" which it commonly went by in those days. My thoughts on this are that it might be the other way around and matured bulk fermented dough might be added to and instant dough to give some better flavour. i even now sometimes add some sour dough starter to a conventional bulk fermented dough not for it raising capacity which is coming from the yeast i would be adding but simply for its flavour of that slow fermenting process inherant in S/D.
I would be happy to go through a few of those recipes for you either open on this page or if you wanted to send through in the message section.
As with any given recipe if you employ bakers percentage you can use the same formula for 1 loaf or 150 loaves.
regards Derek
Thank you for this, I didn't mean to be rude or anything like that. I had been working on trying to figure some of these things out for a couple weeks on my own and ran into this forum and I just figured I'd throw it out there and see if I could at least get pointed in the right direction. I've put up a avatar pic and updated my location since.
I've learned more in 24hrs than the previous couple weeks wandering around the internet and talking to the couple remaining family members who actually worked at the bakery!
I do plan on making some of these breads soon, and I will be sure to post pics and details of my results, good or bad.
Certainly appreciate the help!
Ryan
Hi Onions well done on your info, Nth Dakota would have to be pretty cold there right now, having a 37 degree day here today.
i wasn't inferring rudeness on your part, just nice to know our fellow members a little better. i have been lucky finding fellow members in the same town through these pages as well as made friends and met up with other members overseas or those who were visiting this part of the country.
We've actually been pretty decent these last couple weeks after Christmas. 10-20 degrees for high temps. Prior to the holiday, however, we had a solid week where it did not get above 0 and low temps into the -20s. Brutal.
Australia is definitely on our bucket list.
Is it possible this was the product they used?
https://www.bakersauthority.com/products/instant-do-dough-improver
I think you may have nailed it. One of the recipes actually calls for "instant do". Thought this may just be a shortened up word to save time, but seeing this makes be think that it's probably it.
Thank you for posting this.
I'm not sure Corbion still makes Instant Do. It does still sell several other dough improvers but only in large package sizes.
The Instant Do ingredients are hard to read, but I think it contains emulsifiers (mono- and di-glycerides), dough oxidizers (potassium iodate, ascorbic acid), and enzymes. I'm not sure about the identity of the enzymes. These ingredients could be sourced separately in other small packages of dough improvers, although most do not appear to contain enzymes.
In the old days there were two different "YEAST FOODS" used in the bakery i worked at (Bread Improvers in todays terminology) . One that was added to your typical 4 hour bulk fermented doughs or the Instant variety that was used for No time or Instant Doughs that had no BF period and the dough was processed straight after mixing, scaled, shaped tinned proofed and baked. most of the sliced new WONDER BREAD was from this process but using High speed mixers too (Chorley Wood Process). I might add that Bakery owners loved the fact that late orders could be accomodated quite easily with product able to hit the shelves in just over 2 hours from whoa to go.
Most of the Franchised hot bread shops here in Australia use No time instant doughs as there is no room for Bulk fermenting doughs. They also seem to use lots of premix product too and woe betide a progressive baker that wants to tweek or experiment a little.
Today the Bread Improvers themselves have improved and the range has been simplified and the amount required to be used in a dough determines whether it can be processed as a timed dough or as an Instant dough. typically 0.5% and 1% respectfully.
A local flour mill here has this on their bags of their bread improver
PRODUCT DESCRIPTION Bread improver manufactured without soya flour or emulsifiers for reliable quality.
USAGE RATE For normal instant fermentation processes use at 1% of flour weight. For extended fermentation processes use at 0.5% on flour weight. INGREDIENTS LIST Wheat Flour, Flour Treatment Agents (300), enzymes Contains: Wheat Flour (Gluten) May be present: Soy, Eggs, Milk, Lupin, Barley, Rye, Poppy Seed, Oats, Sunflower Kernels NUTRITIONAL INFORMATION Average Quantity per 100g Energy 1444 kJ Protein 11.80 g Fat, total - saturated 1.18 0.33 g g Carbohydrate, total - sugars 70.86 0.10 g g Dietary Fibre 3.71 g Sodium 141 mg All values specified above are averages. Nutritional information is supplied as a customer service. The stated nutritional values cannot be expected to be present in the finished product. It should also be noted that this product will contribute only 0.6% of the finished product.
Some Interesting reading that may well interest readers is from our brewing fraternity with what they refer to as Yeast Nutrition,i found this quite facinating when i decided to make a cider brew using 100% Apple Juice and a recommendation on using a yeast Nutrient. of even more interest was an article that had home made versions one of which was using dead yeast cells or yeast cells that you purposely kill with high temperature and incorporate as a yeast nutrient. i found this particularly interesting because as bakers especially with s/d cultures e have lots of yest cells that are dying as well as reproducing themselves, i never for one moment thought of them as be a resource for the living cells any way have a read
https://homebrewanswers.com/yeast-nutrient-use/ .
regards Derek
Hi Derek, re yeast nutrient, this seems to be a "big thing" in home winemaking now, with staggered additions, TOSNA and SNA protocols, etc, etc. I'm just trying to get to grips with it all before I make a batch of mead I've got planned!
I think Lallemand, also well known for their bakers' yeasts, are players in the field, so it's not just small fry or cranks. I think Fermaid O is their product made from dead yeast.
But I think dead yeast has been around for a while as a component of dough improvers, especially the so called "clean label" ones, being a natural product. And the glutathione from the dead yeast will increase extensibility in strong doughs. I've had the same effect when making dough with 1 month old fresh yeast.
Apologies OP for going somewhat of topic!
Lance
Hi Lance
Brewers especially amateurs do seem to really get into the different yeasts available to them which is not surprising when they are dealing with quite high alcohol contents of some of their brews. Where i usually make stouts the need for yeast nutrients is not required, but for the cider it was, it was only a small amount too. The dregs in the bottom of the fermenter is interesting stuff too and contains lots of dead yeast cells as well as plenty of live ones that have just gone into hibernation due to their food source being depleated. i quite like using that in bread making from time to time . if i'm not going to be using it i spray it on my lawn which really seems to appreciate it. I apply through one of those sprayers that attach to the garden hose and it sucks it up into the water stream . Perhaps you could open a new thread about you Mead i have just become a registered bee keeper and had two small harvests of honey. Ambrosia is another facinating honey fermented drink which we had a taste of at a bee club meeting
"Today the Bread Improvers themselves have improved and the range has been simplified and the amount required to be used in a dough determines whether it can be processed as a timed dough or as an Instant dough. typically 0.5% and 1% respectfully. "
This ratio seems to fit what I have in these breads. For example, one calls for 90# of flour and 12 oz of instant dough.
Ryan
Hi Ryan
Looking at that 90 Lbs of Flour is 1440ozs
so 1% is 14.4ozs
therefore the Instant Do at 12ozs
is just under 0.9% which as you say seems to be close to the ratio
A point of the confusion can occur with Instant Dough and the brand name Instant do
Derek
My father, George Ort, a fourth generation craft baker born and baking in the east end of London, used to make his main daily production using what he called the "quarter sponge" method. This involved saving a portion of each day's unbaked dough to be used in the next day's dough. This would have been around the same time and country as your recipe book so I'm just wondering if that be your "instant dough."
Just to clarify that the Quarter Sponge method, as practiced by most bakers, was the method of making bread with an initial overnight sponge, followed by a main dough the following morning.
Sometimes there could also be an intermediate batter sponge as well.
This was a system often used in Scotland and designed to make bread with the minimum amount of yeast possible.
Many think that the quarter refers to having 1/4 of the flour in the sponge, but it actually refers to having 1/4 of the water in the sponge.
Possibly your father used a quarter of old dough in his formulation - hence his use of the term.
I think it's been established that the instant dough in Onions recipe was some sort of improver - the quantities are too small to be a sponge.
Lance
Well that's really interesting Lance, thank you. When my Father was around I was more interested in listening to the Beetles than him. Many years later when I retired and started to bake my own bread I found that some of his practices had been randomly absorbed without me realising. A quick google of some of his terminology led a direct path to this TFL community of knowledgeable and generous bakers, where I've been inspired, informed and encouraged. It was as if I'd found "my people" again. Odd how life turns out.
I know the feeling; I guess most teenage sons have a period of rebellion against their father, to varying degrees. I can still feel bad about how ungrateful I was to mine sometimes! But like you, I've come back to respect and admire so much of what he did.
Music for me at the time was Bob Dylan, though I did like the Beatles too and the Stones....
Lance