Hello—I've been making beignets for many many years at my shop, and am now looking to sell a dry mix.
I've been thinking about adding a bit of diastatic malt to the mix (maybe 0.5%), in order to reduce fermentation time for the antsy home bakers. But this got me thinking: if both diastatic malt and extra yeast increase fermentation time, can I also reduce the amount of yeast I use in my regular mix?
Normally I use quite a bit of yeast—a whopping 2% vs flour by weight, and this let's me keep the dough constantly at hand and ready to fry fresh. But maybe adding some malt means I can reduce some of the yeast... are there rules of thumb for these sorts of things? I'm going to start experimenting, but somebody may already have thoughts
Remember that, depending on where you are, some brands and varieties of flour will already include malt, or the effective enzymes. It's probably better not to add malt to those flours.
TomP
Did you mean "increase fermentation speed"?
oh, yes, I did mean fermentation speed, good catch on that blunder.
Hi Mainline interestingly its the first time i have heard of Beignets, i had to look them up and it seems its very much like a doughnut being fried in oil. The amount of yeast being used in a dough will determine the speed of the fermentation time. My career as a baker goes back almost 60 years and i do remember when most of the doughs were timed doughs often around 4 hours BF and made some very nice breads. On occasions late orders might come in and so a dough might be mixed that would have a lot more yeast to shorten the BF time to as little as 1 hour which by the way is often what you see with home bake recipes put up these days. If you analyze these recipes the % of yeast is quite high. i think this can also lead to new bakers missing optimum proof as the speed and the time from under proofed and over proofed is condensed into a much smaller window where as a 4, 6 or 8 hour dough has a much slower tradjectory and a prolonged sweet spot. But there was a new wave coming with the use of what was referred to then as "Yeast Foods" which was added to the mix and would negate the need for a BF period at all and reduce the amount of yeast required too Today the name has changed to Bread Improvers and they have revolutionized both small and large bakeries production, There used several different ones to use, but these days they often have just one and depending if its being used more as a dough conditioner or as an "Instant" dough the amount used determines that, Different brands may have different innoculation rates commonly a small amount 0.5% can be used in a mix and doubled up to the 1% allows for the dough to be mixed given a short recovery and then shaped and final proofed. and baked. As a home baker i do use Bread Improver on occasions especially if bread is required for certain events. The Hospitality training college that used to start around 8 am needed to have fresh dinner rolls out of the oven and cooled for lunch service so these were usually made using an instant dough formula although i did encourage the use of some of my excess sour dough starter as a component of the mix for the flavours that were part of the slower fermentation process rather than as the raising agent. I find that richer doughs lend themselves quite well to being "instant doughs" as their make up has lots of flavouring , butter eggs and sugars. I have a chart that i will include that comes from my tech school notes on yeast quantities, interestingly it was based on the bag of flour weighing in at 150lbs. No OHS in those days. I have revised that original chart to include grams which is now so much easier than lbs and ounces and can be used as a guide
Kind regards Derek
YEAST USAGE CHART GUIDE by Derek Hughes
BF HOURS
%fresh %dried 1/2 actual 1/3
8 0.6666 0.3333 0.2222
7 0.8333 0.4166 0.2777
6 1 0.5 0.3333
5 1.1668 0.5834 0.3893
4 1.3333 0.6666 0.4444
3 2 1 0.6666
2 2.6666 1.333 0.8888
1 5.3333 2.666 1.7777
Using Bakers % with flour being 100% these are the yeast quantities
required # accepted rate of fresh to dried is 3:1 I have also
include 2:1 compare the small amount of difference between the
2 amounts and record the results in the time the dough takes to rise
for example if you have 500g of flour and you want a slow dough with 8 hours bulk fermentation the value
of 1% in that formula would be 5g so 0.6666% would require 3.33g of fresh yeast
if the same dough formula you wanted a 2 hour BF it would be 5g x 2.666% requiring 13.3333g of yeast