The Fresh Loaf

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New Flour/ Changed Variables/ Gluten Degradation

chrisatola's picture
chrisatola

New Flour/ Changed Variables/ Gluten Degradation

Hey Folks,

I'm a self taught (forums and books) baker with a small bakery and pizza joint. I've run into an issue with gluten degradation, and lack the expertise to figure it out. I did some searching and found some posts regarding proteolytic starter...but I also found a lot of other comments and variables.

First, I've had my little bakery for a little over 2 years, and haven't encountered anything resembling this issue in that time period. When I was first selling breads at farmer's markets about 4 years ago I had what may have been the same or similar issue, but I attributed that to the ambient temperature of bulk fermentation (getting into the mid 80F range) being too high..

Things have changed a lot with the Covid19 outbreak. I've been purchasing other flour (generic enriched and bleached all purpose) than the type I was using for the last 2 years. I've been buying that flour for a month or so, with no problem. I recently found a regional supplier of stone ground, organic flour and was excited to purchase some of it.  I used it today for the first time, and the results were terrible. (The flour I was using for the past 2 years was unbleached all purpose.)

General Method: 100% hydration starter left to mature overnight at room temperature (75F). Everything is hand mixed, and my process is a cobbled together mixture of different techniques that HAS been working well...until today.

Mix H20 and levain
Mix Flour and Salt
Incorporate the dry and wet, rest 15 minutes.
Slap and fold a few times until the dough surface gets a little smooth, but before the dough tears. Rest 15 minutes. (This stage 3 times total, with the last rest being 30 minutes)
Stretch and Fold. Rest 30 minutes.

For my dough that I bake the same day, I do 2 stretch and fold intervals 30 minutes apart, then bulk ferment for about 3 hours. For my dough that I bake the next day, I do 3 stretch and fold intervals, oil a tub, and bulk ferment overnight at about 40F.

I followed the same process today, and all of the dough started falling apart about 2 hours into bulk. The only exception was the baguette dough I made that had less levain %. When I left the kitchen, that dough (retarding) still looked strong and "normal."

From what I can tell, the general process hasn't changed, but obviously the ingredients have. I haven't had the problem more than today, but I'm not really very anxious to have it repeatedly.

Can someone with more experience give me some insight? New flour has lower protein %? The added bran/germ from the stone ground whole grain makes the dough THAT much more fragile? Starter % should be adjusted? 

I read about proteolytic starter, but I haven't had any issues until today, and the pizza dough I made with my Neapolitan style pizza flour isn't displaying any of the aforementioned problems.

Help!! And thanks for reading!!!

Chris



 

chrisatola's picture
chrisatola

I can't figure out how to upload an image and have it sized correctly (I'm not that savvy, apparently).

Here is an imgur link to what the loaves normally look like. 

https://imgur.com/gallery/UHDgDSA

 

Today's bake was a third of the volume, if I'm being generous.

MikeNewbieBaker's picture
MikeNewbieBaker

Hi Chris,

Just saw your post. Did you figure out what happened? i think your flour has poor gluten formation.

 

I had been trying some bread recipes and failing miserably. 

 

The yeast was old. Expiration was suppose to be mid 2022. So I changed it out.  Still poor results. 

The All purpose flour I used was store brand, and had poor gluten strength.

I swapped back to king Arthur's unbleached bread flour, and success!

 

I did an Experiment between Stop & Shop APF

VS. king arthur unbleached bread flour.

 

50g flour each +  27g water each.  Knead, cover in bowl, wait 30 min.  Wash in 100ml water. Rinse. weight the wet gluten mass 

===

Results:

King arthur = 66 grams hydrated gluten, good firm structure

Stop and shop APF = 32 grams hydrated gluten. Poor structure. Loosely organized, sticky.

 

 

tpassin's picture
tpassin

Very interesting, and it would be helpful to repeat the tests to give an idea of how much variation to expect.

The one time I tried to rinse out the starch to get the gluten, it took me a lot of rinses and manipulation.  It seemed like there was always more to get. How did you wash the starch out?

TomP

MikeNewbieBaker's picture
MikeNewbieBaker

I used a small stainless steel bowl to wash it out. For the all purpose flour, the gluten ball had a hard time staying together - I used a sieve to salvage the small bits so I get a more accurate Weight.  I didnt get to rise it as I has for the king Arthur, which made a nice ball.