February 8, 2021 - 12:33pm
Can I add diastatic malt powder before an 8 hour autolyse?
I understand that adding too much DMP to my bread dough will yield an unpleasant gummy crumb. If I use the recommended 0.5% of flour weight, but let the dough (just flour and water at this point) autolyse over night for 8 hours or so, will it be ok, or will the long autolyse have a similar effect as adding too much DMP to begin with, giving the enzymes too much time to work?
Or, should I just add the DMP at the same time as the yeast and salt?
I have looked around for a bit, and haven't found this particular question addressed.
Thanks,
Dan
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What's the purpose? A bit excessive. Either do en extended autolyse in the fridge and/or add in the salt. I don't think room temperature with no salt and this length of time is advisable.
I wouldn’t do an autolyse for 8 hours without salt, maybe if as Abe said you refrigerate it, but either way I wouldn’t do it without salt. If you refrigerate it, then you’ll be dealing with really slow fermentation for quite sometime after you add your levain in the morning. By adding the salt you slow the amylase so it isn’t too active and then your overnight autolyse with salt - saltolyse dough will be at room temperature when you add the levain and will ferment at a more normal pace.
Benny
If you want an extended autolyse (let’s say more than an hour), then I’d suggest adding the diastatic malt after the autolyse. As a matter of fact, an overnight autolyse won’t require diastatic malt, since the enzymes already in the flour will have plenty of time to convert some of the starch to sugars.
Paul
Thanks for your responses. Having such a long autolyse comes from the Reinhart book "Whole Grains", where uses a soaker that doesn't require refrigeration, but I think he does use a little salt. I wanted to try to simplify his epoxy method by going with just the soaker, and adding the remaining ingredients all at once the following morning. I did this with the last batch I made, which turned out very well, but I didn't use the diastolic malt powder. I don't really know whether the the DMP would add any benefit, Paul doesn't seem to think so. My reason for simplifying is that I have arthritis in my hands, and the less wear and tear on them, the better. The next batch I will try using mixing the DMP in with the yeast, and see if leads to any improvement.
Dan