November 2, 2022 - 4:08pm
Peter Reinhart & Tangzhong
I would like to try using a tangzhong in Peter Reinhart’s 100% Whole Wheat Sandwich Bread.
Would you recommend adding the tangzhong to the soaker, biga, or final dough?
The problem I'm trying to solve is the way the whole wheat bread starts to crumble on the third day.
Thanks!
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It should be added to the main dough while mixing with the other ingredients.
I’ve made a lot of tangzhong breads. I prepare the tangzhong in the bowl of the mixer using it in a Bain Marie set up. Once it has cooled, I add the wet ingredients and mix a bit and then the dry. So I add it during the beginning of mix.
Benny
When you heat the flour/water mixture to make the tangzhong, you gelatinize the starch before baking. This allows for higher hydration of the dough. Why? The swollen starch granules are able to hold much more water.
Pregelatinized flour increases dough strength, volume, and staling rate. Including pre-gelatinized flour in a preferment exposes the hydrated starches to enzymes, bacteria and yeast that might break down the starch. I am unaware (though I'm sure someone will chime in if there is) of a recipe that preferments gelatinized dough.
So, I'd agree with the previous two posts, and add it to the final dough.
In fact Ron, I have working on a dough today in which the porridge is pre-fermented.
are you doing it in order to saccharify the hydrated dough? I’ve been experimenting with that recently. Using hydrated rye (could be any grain) and diastatic malt and keeping the temperature around 140F the flavor becomes noticeably sweeter. I finish at 175F or so to kill the amylase activity before adding it to an overnight ferment in the fridge for the final dough.
In this case I saccharified the porridge holding it at 148°F for 6 hours. Later I added some starter to pre-ferment it to increase the complexity of the flavour of the porridge. I didn’t do anything to denature the amylase though, I believe that it is denatured at temperatures > 185°F. By pre-fermenting the saccharified porridge the pH should get < 4.5 at which pH the amylase activity will slow.
That being said, something is off about this dough it is rising much more slowly than it should be. I may have to try this again.
I've experienced that too, with so many fermentables sometimes the PH can get low enough to slow down the yeast. I try warmer temps and accept less rise when it happens. Too many sugars can slow the yeast too.
I have measured the pH throughout bulk and although it started a bit lower than usual, it wasn’t so low to interfere with the yeast which are quite a bit more tolerant of low pH then the LAB are. The dough, other than the sugars in the saccharified porridge didn’t have any added sugar and the pre-fermentation I would have thought would have helped control the further production of sugars as the microbes would consume at least some of it. I suspect something was off with my starter. I’m going to do a series of high ratio feeds over the weekend to see if that helps.
Benny
I'm a little confused, it was my understanding that LAB bacteria can comfortably reproduce at PH levels well below that where yeast is happy producing CO2. Doesn’t CLAS goe down as low as 3.0?
There is a good reason why sourdough won’t continue to get more and more acidic over time. Once the pH drops below 3.8 the LAB stop reproducing, they will continue to be metabolically active for a while, but eventually the low pH will make them stop producing acids. Yeast on the other hand are less affected by low pH than the LAB. In general sourdough will not get to a pH much below 3.5 because of the pH’s effect on LAB.
The following are links:
Acid Slows down yeast respiration below PH 4.5
Sourdough can easily get to PH of 3.5 - 4.0
I presume you are referring to Reinhart's 100% WW bread from Whole Grain Breads. The few times I have used a TZ in this recipe, I first prepared the TZ with a portion of the soaker flour. Once it had cooled, I added the rest of the soaker ingredients. Maybe this wasn't the right way to use it, but I found that it did improve the texture and delayed staling of the bread. I haven't tried it by adding it to the final dough for comparison.