September 19, 2014 - 10:40am
Failed attempt at rustic dough :(
Hi everyone,
I'm a beginner and just tried my hand at rustic dough (80% hydration), but I think I made a miscalculation with the formula and did not use enough yeast, so, sadly, my dough didn't rise.
I only baked half of the dough, and since I know it's not a winner, I don't want to bake it alone.
Does anybody have any suggestions as to how I could use this remaining dough and incorporate it into fresh dough? Perhaps use it in place of a biga or pâte fermentée? It only has about 1 g of active dry yeast in it. How do I adjust the yeast of the final dough accordingly?
Any tips and advice are greatly appreciated!
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What you have is called old dough (or pâte fermentée) and can be used as a pre-ferment. Just subtract the yeast from the final formula as you would with flour and water. Don't forget to subtract the salt too or it might be too salty.
Thank you Maverick, Also, good call about the salt, I would have overlooked it!! Sounds simple enough :)
By the way, I don't think that too little yeast is a failure. It just means it needs longer in bulk fermentation. It is a good technique to add more complex flavors in the absence of a preferment.
I didn't realize it would just take longer, I thought I needed a precise amount or it would not rise, turns out it's a pretty forgiving ingredient! Thank you.
1 g of yeast is a small measure, its what it is related to that counts, for 100g flour that equates to 1% which is usually enough to bring a dough finished at 28 degC through in 2 hours but will take proportionatly longer the greater the quantity of flour.
By all means use some of the dough in a later mix, it can be refrigerated, i have been making a dough (Biga) with flour water and a small amount of yeast to add to doughs through the week, these are usually with a yeast rate of 1/2 or 1/4%. I dont usually worry about the correcting my formula for yeast in this instance as i am usuall making a fast final dough using 2% Yeast to bring the dough through in an Hour due to time constraints in a semi commercial environment.
Kind regards Derek
Good to know! The yeast was supposed to be 0.67% of the bread flour, and I used 142 g flour so I calculated it to be about .95 g and rounded up to 1 g. That is a good point, that the yeast in the final dough would make up for the old dough's slack! Thanks for the advice!!
I forgot to mention that it does depend on the % yeast to flour. A biga typically only uses 0.1% yeast to flour. That is enough to ignore. At 0.7% I personally would account for it. Either way a biga contains no salt and this should definitely be accounted for in old dough.
I am curious as to the formula and method being used. If you are using a mixer and intensively mix the dough, then 0.7% is a fairly normal amount used as it will generally reach peak fermentation after 1 hour at 77 deg. F with that amount (if using instant yeast ... active dry would be closer to 0.9%). If you used a different mixing method then this amount might be too high.
Given the percentage and the failure to rise, I would assume either the yeast is bad or the mixing method chosen was incorrect and the strength of the dough was not enough. Can you give more details as to at what point was there no rise? Also any other details would be nice.
Absolutely!
Here is the formula:
2% salt
0.6% yeast (I used active dry)
90% water
50% dried fruit (it was a breakfast focaccia)
I did everything by hand in a bowl with a wooden spoon, I do think I'll use my mixer next time though!
The yeast that I used is active dry, I didn't put in water to bloom beforehand because I figured my dough would be very wet so I wouldn't need to. Maybe this is where I messed up?
After mixing the dough, I left it in the pan I would be baking it in in the fridge overnight, and then I took it out and let it sit at room temperature for 4 1/2 hours. It did not rise at all. Here are some pictures:
^^ This is what the dough looked like before I put it in the fridge. The dough in the bowl is 80% hydrated, and the one in the pan is my breakfast focaccia with dried fruit that was 90% hydrated. It looked just like this right before I baked it too, unfortunately lol. Here is what I used exactly:
142 g flour
3 g salt
1 g yeast
128 g water
70 g dried fruit
Here is how the focaccia turned out after baking:
I am also wondering if maybe my pan was too large for such a small amount of dough?
I don't know if it's just me, but I don't see any of the pictures you tried to add. If you need help with this step, look at the FAQ page.
Also, to make sure I'm reading this right, did you say you went right from mixing the dough to putting it into the pan without a bulk fermentation? If so, I think that's your problem right there, especially with going into the fridge immediately.
Doing an overnight or 24 hour bulk in fridge i and then doing the final proof, either at room temp or slowly in the fridge, would probably help. When working by hand, possibly throwing a stretch and fold or two in there probably wouldn't hurt either.
Or you could do a shorter bulk ferment at room temp and then a final proof in the fridge. I think there's a few different things that would work, but with a small amount of yeast, you should give it more time or a warmer environment.
You might see an improvement using your mixer for two reasons: first, there's a good chance it gets better dough development than your hands, and will just rise better, and second, it will warm up your dough more with the friction of mixing, which will give the yeast a boost. This isn't to say that I think you should or shouldn't use your mixer, just that if you do try it and see an improvement, don't assume you can only get good results with your mixer. There's just some different factors at work.
I agree. You missed the bulk ferment step. If you are going to retard the dough in the refrigerator I suggest doing the bulk ferment first and then proofing in the refrigerator.
The other thing is that focaccia usually has oil in it. I would try adding 10% olive oil to start. To me, focaccia without oil is ciabatta which is not the same.
In addition, I would say that 50% dried fruit is a lot to mixing into the dough. I could see that as a topping after the rise, but it just seems excessive to me. I am by no means an expert on putting fruit in bread so I defer to the forum on this one. I guess it IS focaccia so it doesn't need to be that high. The only thing I know about dried fruit is that it is recommended to soak it in water first.
I use instant yeast, but have had success with using active dry without soaking it in water first. This step is called proofing the yeast because it proves that it is viable. It also wakes the little buggers up before adding it to your dough. If you question your yeast source then I would do the soak. Otherwise it is up to you, but if you skip it the fermentation might take a little longer.
Thanks guys, will make note! Sorry about the pictures, don't know why they're not showing up. Thanks again.