Managing Dough Temperature
I've been having two problems: 1) is that some of the recipes I'm using are rising to double in about 15 minutes, and 2) the dough is sometimes so elastic, it won't hold a shape (e.g., tortillas or pita rounds).
Looking into it, I found that dough temperature is maybe as important as how much water is being used. High/lower protein flours don't seem to be a big issue in home baking. Big factors also include mixing time -- the mixer factor.
I then found this article from King Arthur's blogs, about the Desired Dough Temperature (DDT).
Desired dough temperature | King Arthur Baking
I started learning (again) here in North Carolina, US, this summer. It's also been a hot summer in 2024, with temperatures usually in the 90s (F). We have air-conditioning, but keep it fairly warm to help with the electric bills. The kitchen is usually around 78-80º F, and the flour is in the kitchen so about the same. I use instant yeast, stored in the freezer, but usually dumped into the flour to sit while measuring other ingredients.
The water is definitely an issue: Various recipes, particularly the ones I'm having trouble with, call for warm water. I hadn't thought about using cold water. Like many people, I just "assumed" that yeast needed at least lukewarm water to activate. Instant yeast, apparently doesn't care.
Wheat-based dough apparently would like something in the area of 75-78º F. Later in the article, he says typical sourdough bread is the same.
So: How do you guys manage dough temperature? Do you bother? Do you get all the way into using an instant-read thermometer? I'd be interested to know, since I'm kind of "winging it" at the moment.
I see three different topics kinda mixed together here: ingredients/dough temp, room temp, and yeast action. Interdependent, but separate.
My kitchen, like yours, is very warm in the summer, 78-80ºF and unventilated. That means any ingredients stored there are also that temp. In the winter, that goes down by 10º. So I pay more attention to ingredients temp before mixing than dough temp. Instant-read and infrared thermometers are must-have tools, IMO.
It's worthwhile identifying parts of your house that are outside the norm. I have two such rooms: A pantry with water heater and large brick chimney passing through it gives rock-steady temps, only varies from 78º in the winter to 82º in the summer; and an unheated laundry room on the north side with large temp swings every day-to-night. I keep thermometers in those rooms at shelf height.
It's worth noting that temps near the ceiling will always be warmer than mid-room, and cooler near the floor. I just measured my kitchen, it's 76.5º at the ceiling and 72º at the floor.
Instant yeast action: Have you tried cutting back on the yeast amount? Here at 7,000 feet, I typically use 1/4 to 1/2 the amount called for in recipes.
Just some thoughts.
Sorry for such a delay in responding; I'm developing three different recipes at the same time, and time just vanishes!
I'm in a mobile home, so there's no real variance in location. The kitchen is very tiny, and open to the other spaces. The overall temperature is the same from one end to the other. Plus, I have a clock in the kitchen that includes the room temperature and humidity. It's pretty much the same all summer, then cooler but the same all winter.
I used to have an infrared thermometer, which went away during life changes. I do use an instant read probe thermometer all the time. I've been thinking about that IR thermometer though -- prices have come way down. You may have convinced me to get it.
As for the yeast: I'm using consistent amounts of yeast, but having these varying results. I'm at sea level (Central North Carolina), but what DOES change is the water temperature. I've seen my main problem coming when a recipe calls for warmer than usual water. I've stopped following that, excepting for tortillas.
I'm also seeing the major difference in where I'm doing my proofing and bulk fermenting. When I use the oven with the light on, everything speeds up. That's about 80-F degrees, on average. But when I just put the bins on the washing machine in the "open air," I'm at about 78-F. Those 2 degrees make quite the huge difference!
15 minutes to double is an surprisingly short time. If I encountered that, I would cut way back on the amount of yeast. With dry yeast, there are differences between the temperature that is good for activating it, the "optimum" temperature for fermenting, and the temperature you might actually want to ferment at.
So very many recipes seem to think we're all using active dry yeast from decades ago, and that it needs to be activated before use in warm water. Not any more. Even active dry yeast no longer needs that activation step, and "instant" dry yeast needs it even less. These yeasts don't even need to be dissolved in water first.
There can be other reasons for using warm or even hot water in certain recipes, especially with unyeasted flatbreads. Some recipes for making rotis have you pour boiling water onto the flour. Warm or hot water tends to allow the starch in the flour to absorb more water, for one thing. And if hot enough it denatures some of the protein and makes the rounds much easier to roll out without much springing back. Here's a link for this (I think this site borrowed it from the original site which I cannot find at the moment).
One might want to use a lower (or higher) dough temperature to control the fermentation time or to change the flavor profile. Still, for the most part most recipes work well over a range of "room temperature" values.
TomP
Yup, I was a bit shocked at how fast this pita dough rose! The YouTube baker seemed fairly credentialed, so I just followed the recipe. I made it twice, thinking I'd somehow screwed up. No, it was that way. And I believe he was using the somewhat hot water, AND having the yeast (with a bit of flour) sit in that water to "activate."
I looked at that quite skeptically, knowing that instant yeast doesn't need any activation, really. But, I went along with it. And the results were pretty stupid, all things considered.
Pursuing pita bread, I ran into the most fascinating video I've watched in quite some time, from that OCD engineer I (and others here) have come to know: Seraphine Lishe and her Novita Listyani channel. This one is about the science behind pita bread.
Pita Bread: From Science to Skillet (Recipe Included!) | Tangzhong and Poolish Method (youtube.com)
Passing the actual physics part, she makes this bread from start to finish, with a minimal number of cut-aways, only for repetitive steps. She does hand kneading, and has numerous tips while doing each step. I learned quite a few cool things I hadn't known, about kneading and working with high-hydration dough. She also uses the IR thermometer to good effect.
I also decided (on something she said in passing) to get some chopsticks over at Walmart, because they're thinner than a wooden spoon handle, and thicker than a skewer. They really are the perfect tool for mixing tangzhong and yudane (and I assume other starters like biga and sourdough). Indeed, they're the right size, easy to clean, cheap, and don't have a lot sticking to them.
Running across a different type of bread recipe that was nearly 75% hydration, I began to see that the fast rising is partly the bin temperature/location, but also the amount of water -- not just the temperature. This second recipe also was rising astoundingly fast!
With the two recipes, both very different but having the same effect, I've come to learn that high-hydration bread is radically different in treatment from sandwich bread (generally around 65% hydration).
My conclusion seems to be that dough temperature itself doesn't seem to be as major a consideration as I'd thought. It's important, but not at the top of the list. Yeast amount can be used to compensate for air temperature, and also for flavor development and fermentation length. I knew that, but not as directly.
I previously looked up "scalded flour" -- the boiling water over flour -- and see that's the main difference between tangzhong and yudane (you-dah-nee). Tangzhong brings the water and flour to a simmer to gelatinize. Yudane pours the 131-F or above water over the flour to mix and also gelatinize. I'm messing around with the yudane because it's faster than tangzhong, and kind of nifty. :-)
Agree with Tom that most doughs work well over a range of room temperatures. I only use slightly warmer water when baking on winter nights (17C room temp). Other than that, I only sometimes use hot water for unyeasted flat doughs (wraps, even dumpling skins). But even then, the difference is not great.
If it's pita bread you're after, I found that quite a different ball game. I struggled to get reliable pockets initially. The game changer was high hydration, stronger dough (I too knead my dough by hand, and lean towards the lazier spectrum), and stable, medium heat. After trying it for some time with a baking stone with unreliable results (probably did not heat it up enough, or too much heat lost taking them in and out), I now make them on a cast iron pan on the stove with no problems. The amount of yeast (I tend to use little) and room temperature have little bearing as long as the dough has enough time to develop strength and flavour. You don't want your pita to balloon and then -poof- deflate with a little hole. The high hydration, long rise and minimal kneading probably allowed the dough to develop strength without crazy elasticity and springback.
-Lin
It's nice to know I'm not alone in suddenly running into a sinkhole with trying pita bread! :-) One of the things I learned with the corn tortillas is that flipping the raw piece often at the start is important to sealing any small holes that would deflate the final bread.
Another thing is to use a paper towel or potholder or whatever else, even just your hand to pat the surface when the dough round goes into a pan. That too, helps seal the edges during the heating up phase.
In another very good video about tortillas, one tip was to use two pans (since they don't get dirty really). The first is a medium-low heat, which allows for good edge/hole sealing, and begins heating the moisture inside the dough.
The second pan is very high heat and can be stainless steel, carbon steel, or the classic cast iron. Since the dough has come to about the conversion point to steam on the low-heat, when you take it out and hit it with the high heat, the "puff" begins almost immediately. Plus it allows for an assembly line, where 1 round is being pre-cooked, while the second is finishing with "puff."
Everything I learned in the corn tortilla experiment crossed over nicely to the pita bread adventure. Well, except for one thing: I'd expected to have my pita bread cooked and puffed in about 2 minutes! LOL! Okay...so it actually takes about 5 minutes. :-) Yeasted flatbread vs no-yeast tortilla, pretty much.
I'm going to make another batch, and take all this new information into it. Hopefully, I'll end up with a "writ in stone" recipe, and can move on.
That's an excellent tip, thanks for that. If you like soft flatbreads, have you tried naan at all? I love it. The yogurt in the dough makes it extremely tasty.
To make them ultra soft inside and yet crispy on the outside with its typical brown blistered look, I learnt a tip: brush one side of the naan dough with water and put that wet side down onto the cast iron pan, it will sizzle, immediately put a lid on top, it steams a bit. Lots of gigantic bubbles form. Then flip and finish uncovered. I think naan is really my favourite yeasted flatbread.
Using two comals or fry pans is pretty standard in the Latin-tortilla world, as I have read. Though I have usually read of the pans used in the opposite order: hot to start with, cooler for finishing.
Well, I have to say I'm not particularly a fan of flatbreads, and not really into naan either. Not saying they're awful; just not my favorite. Maybe because of how I grew up, but I'm more a sandwich bread kind of guy. :-) Meanwhile, I have a couple of meals I do like, which involve tortillas, pita bread, or empanada dough. So...that's what I'm learning to make at home.
I will say I wasn't a fan of Mexican food, but recently found out it's because I don't like commercial tortillas. So perhaps I'll give the naan a try one time, just to see if it's the same situation.
Apropos the two pans and their order of use, it seems to me the medium-low to start makes sense. The idea is to heat the internal dough water from (presumably) room temperature up to boiling, where it will turn to steam. Additionally; the main problem with "puff" is leakage somewhere in the dough.
By starting with lower heat, it's easier to pat the dough a few time to ensure it's sealed. The gradual fry on each side also sets the dough with that included patting/sealing. At that point, the water has come up to near steaming, and the blast of heat from the second, hot pan would be something like oven spring. I dunno...I had pretty good results with just one large stainless steel pan on medium high. But I did use a towel to press it around the edges when the round first went into the pan.
Yes, I've been using a chopstick for years for just those reasons. But, a suggestion - don't get those cheap disposable chopsticks. They are not strong enough for anything but the thinnest biga/starter/batter, and they are too short. My chopstick is a fake ivory one with a round cross-section and maybe twice the diameter of a disposable chopstick.
Making a note. I have an Asian market near here, and when I looked, they had a whole spectrum of prices. I had no idea what I was doing, and just bought cheap ones, probably bamboo. I hadn't thought about the slightly wider diameter, and will definitely look again. Now that I have them, I'm using one of them a lot! So even if the price is higher, I likely won't go through them very quickly. Thanks!
BTW, I only use one, not two as in the video. I stir as one would using a wooden spoon instead of holding two as if they would be used for picking up food. I suspect that using two might work a little better for a dough but I only use them for starters and I think one is better there.
Yup. I don't know how to use chopsticks anyway, so I'm using just the one to stir. I used to use a wooden spoon handle, but that accumulates a fair amount of sticky dough. The chopstick seems more non-stick.
Just so, and it works the other way, too. For example, a low hydration starter takes longer to develop than i high hydration one.
As for fast rising, sometimes it's convenient but the longer the fermentation time the better the flavor, as a rule. I have the time and I like flavor, so I hardly ever try for a very rapid process time.
I think I said this before, but try your hand at making glass bread (100% hydration). It's a real eye-opener, and once you've done it you will have a lot of confidence and skills to deal with most other doughs, even if they get gloppy by some mishap.
TomP
Pretty sure I'm not going to be making this stuff. :-) Thanks for the suggestion, though. Yes, it would be a wonderful learning experience for high-hydration dough. All well and good, but honestly? I mostly just want everyday bread. Plus, with my age came weak teeth, and I can't do much with artisan breads. Ciabatta is a problem, and I'm thinking this glass bread likely would have a pretty hard crust?
I did stumble into a fabulous Italian bread, by accident, that I'll write up later. It's done in a loaf pan, and even with a crispy crust, it's thin enough that I can chew it nicely. Sometimes all these experiments and "failures" end up with an accidental treasure find. (Have to be sure to have notes in the recipe about what the heck I did, though.)
As much as I like the advice of Mauritzio, Chain Baker and others, I believe that serious attention to DDT just complicates a process that builds very small masses of dough which are very likely to revert to ambient temperature much more quickly than 20-30 kg dough batches that commercial bakers are handling. You might want to think about retarding your doughs overnight in the fridge. I do this with every bread I make except possibly for ciabatta.
So yes, technicians can and do manage all sorts of environmental factors, but many of us do just fine by just managing hydration and timing without adding extra layers of complexity.
Good luck,
Phil
Y'know, I've been sort of thinking the same as what you've just said. It seems to me that a number of recipes online, especially YouTube, tend to be sort of a modified "home version" of (apparently) commercial baking applications. The idea of 50-pounds of dough, for example, never crossed my mind. But I'll bet you're right -- what works in an industrial setting is a lot more complicated than at home.
I did put the dough in the fridge to slow it down, but my thinking is if the recipe doesn't work right off the bat, screw it -- move on and find a recipe that does work. Why would I spend time fixing a bad recipe, when I'm almost certain to find a good recipe? (Except for some of the breads I'm having to develop, because there aren't any "good" recipes for them.)
People over my life have been annoyed at how many questions I ask about things. But coming across other people like Alton Brown or Seraphine Lishe, or a fun site about Engineers Can Cook, I've realized I'm not the odd one. Too many people just take whatever information they're given without questioning any of it. No thought about inconsistencies.
The other big thing I've found is this "silo knowledge" problem, where people are extremely knowledgeable about one area of specialty, but pay no attention to other related (or even unrelated) areas. So someone will explain how to "solve a problem" they've encountered in their area. But that problem has long-ago been solved a whole lot more efficiently by people working in a different area.
I saw countless videos about people who couldn't get their corn tortillas to "puff." I saw many more about the same problem with pita bread. Except for one restauranteur who makes hundreds of corn tortillas a say, nobody was actually solving the problem.
This guy explained the science behind the heat and composition of the griddle surface, and the amount of water held in the tortilla dough. He showed how to test the proper hydration, rather than just go along mindlessly with a recipe. Indeed, I found that the recipes I'd followed never actually spoke to how much "extra" water would be needed.
Sometimes written posts and recipes are better at all this, and there are educational sites like Fresh Loaf, King Arthur, Bakepedia and many others. With enough time, I'll come across an extended article that goes into extreme detail about some problem I'm having. I like that, but I like to see the videos more often.
Because I'm interested in so many varied subjects, foods, types of information and so forth, I routinely see that solutions to numerous problems are all "out there," if people do some looking.
And so, I'm coming to agree that a lot of these YouTube recipes are a bit misleading in that they're not being done by people at home. On the other hand, there are a lot of people cooking at home who seem a bit lost in their videos. They're attempting to re-invent the wheel, so to speak, because there aren't many old people left who used to cook a lot.
Technicians are pretty cool, though, because they learn things through molecular biology, particle physics, modern chemistry, and thermodynamics that we regular people don't get to learn. The best blends come from people like the above mentioned, who not only show "what" to do, and "how" to do it, but also explain WHY you're doing it!
Very under-rated word: "why?"
I make a lot of tortillas and it is always a hit or miss proposition. I've watched a lot of videos. Would love to have the link to the one you reference. I have had pretty good luck doing a mitad y mitad , 1/2 and 1/2 corn flour tortillas. They taste wonderful. I do have a comal and have a love hate relationship with it. It is the single most expensive black steel one that you can buy and it is harder to season than any iron skillet I have ...some of mine are 100 yrs old and are still perfect non stick.
Anyway ! Back to the video. Much obliged and glad i found this topic today. c THANK YOU
Here is a short video by Rick Bayless demonstrating making corn tortillas, including the two-level heated surfaces and puffing -
https://youtu.be/dRwMu9ERCKk
No troubleshooting information, though.
Yes! That's the guy the lady in the video I was watching talked about. He taught her, I think she says. This is Helen Rennie, and when I first encountered one of her videos, I almost abandoned it. It "seemed as if" it was all talking, and I was looking for "showing." HOWEVER! As I saw something and went back to see what it was, I began to discover a new fascination.
This lady also is in the group of what I'm calling OCD cooking engineers. She, too, asks a lot of questions (of herself), the proceeds to go all over the InterWebs looking for answers. She'll often find that other people have already asked and answered the same question. So she gathers it all up in one place and produces a video "How To" for that recipe.
Pretty cool stuff!
Anyway, here she is going into very good detail about corn tortillas. It was this video that showed me the Bayliss 2-pan system I mentioned. The video may seem long, but in reality it's not: It's concise, but very detailed.
Corn Tortillas (Perfect Puff, Masa Harina Brands, Skillet types) (youtube.com)
I will watch it later today. Appreciate the link. c
Here's the link with the discussion on pans, heat, and so forth:
How To Make Corn Tortillas PUFF and Why It Happens (youtube.com)