fast-rise failure?

I make all my dough manually. For a loaf consisting of 4 3/4 C flour of which 1 3/4 C is a poolish, this is what I use, 1 1/8 tsp yeast total. Recipe is as follows:

Poolish: 1C AP flour + 3/4 C KA Irish Wholemeal flour from KA + 1C water + 1/8 tsp SAF Red Instant yeast. Allow to rest 18-22 hours.

Dough: Poolish + 4C AP flour +1 TBS salt + 1 tsp SAF Red Instant Yeast. Then have at it. IMHO and without ever having used a bread machine, you're using too much yeast as 2 1/4 tsp is way way too much yeast for just 4-5C flour. PM me.

EDIT: get yourself some SAF RED INSTANT YEAST and you won't go wrong. A one pound package will make over a hundred loaves of delicious bread for less than $7.

I'm a little unclear on whether the bread was made in a machine or by hand with machine yeast. I think you're using a machine -- but I'm going to start with general principles before getting specific.

In any case, the beery flavor came from... well... beer. If not beer, something very much like it. During the very long rise (overnight on the counter) the yeast fermented a lot of the flour as a part of its digestive cycle, and that's what you tasted. The technical term for the liquid produced during a yeast fermentation is "hooch," which ought to tell all you need to know about why you tasted sour beer.

kokopuffs mentioned talked about using a poolish, but didn't explain why one would want to. European style breads are often given a sour tang with a "levain" called a "poolish" or a "biga" (pretty much the same things, only a French poolish is made with a higher ratio of water to flour than an Italian biga). The poolish (or biga) is allowed to sit out overnight (or even a couple of days) until it gets a healthy fermentation going, and is then used as part of the flour and part of the yeast quotient. But only part. You can understand why he associated your overnight technique with a poolish.

Similarly "sourdough starters" are used as part, but not all, of the flour quotient of sourdough bread. Extra yeast isn't usually used in sourdough breads, in order to enhance the sour taste of the mature, stressed yeast from the starter.

You unintentionally turned your entire dough into a starter, and got some funky bread. No more overnights for the whole recipe.

As a side note, fifteen minutes is a good bit of kneading time. Take your white-bread dough to the "windowpane" stage, then stop kneading -- no matter how quickly or how long.

If you're using a machine, go ahead and follow the directions unless you get consistently bad results. Whether you are aren't actually looking at the bread for the desired amount of rise, rather than timing it is preferable. When you get the amount of rise you want, move on to the next step. As a rule, don't give the dough more than 90 minutes without moving on.

Not to give an actual answer to a direct answer or anything, but ... If you're going to hold dough overnight, you should hold it in the refrigerator. Most bread bakers consider it excellent practice to form the loaves, and hold them chilled for up to a day before baking. To repeat: Form, then chill.

BDL

PS. You certainly can make bread with less yeast than you used. However, unless you allow a long rise time (like you did in all innocence) the amount in your recipe is very common. Standard even. One tsp of instant yeast per cup of flour is a little heavy handed, but only a little -- and you used less, which is the general idea. If you give significantly less yeast a longer first rise time, you'll get a better developed flavor in the bread -- so Dillbert's sense of proportion makes sense in that sense, but it's not a rule or anything. Make sense?

BDL stated: <<...kokopuffs mentioned talked about using a poolish, but didn't explain...>> Checkout my post previous to yours and then please explain.


POOLISH:
1C AP flour
3/4C of either rye or Irish Wholemeal flour, at least 3/4C of something that includes the whole kernel, the outer coat.
1/8 tsp SAF Red Instant Yeast
1C water at 90F.

Mix all and allow to rest for 18-22 hours. Then, mix the poolish into the remainder of your recipe that calls for 4C AP flour + 1tsp SAF RED YEAST + 1C water + 1 TBS salt as I've stated elsewhere with all due respect.

I meant you explained how to make a poolish but didn't explain what a poolish had to do with dwc's question, nor did you explain why someone would want to make one and add it to "[a] recipe that calls for 4C AP flour + 1tsp SAF RED YEAST + 1C water + 1 TBS salt as I've stated elsewhere with all due respect." I feared that unless the perceived omissions were explained, your discussion might have been more confusing than effective. I apologize for any confusion my own poor efforts may have engendered.

BDL

Thank heavens that's cleared up. We can sleep again.

That seemed clear, at least to me. However you've learned something about both.

Yes. Exactly. New plan. Make bread, buy beer.

BDL

Alright I'll explain. Any preferment as well as any fermentation that has proceeded slowly wil give more flavor. A slower process, sometimes called a retard if refrigerated, allows the bacteria (yes, bacteria) and yeast within the batch to produce more and therfore better flavors from the sugars that have been produced from the slow acting yeast's breaddown of starches.

Think of starch as a railroad track and clip off a tiny portion of that track; that's what's called sugar. And the slower the yeast and bacteria work whether in a retard or a poolish (to which a microscopic bit of yeast has been added), the more sugars they make and the better the flavors obtained from it.

FWIW, instant yeast (aka bread machine yeast, SAF, a couple of others) is actually more active than active dry. Although the packages have the same quantity (2 1/4 tsp), and say you can use them interchangeably, you usually cut back to 2 tsp when using instant and get the same results.

Instant yeast usually isn't bloomed, so that was an unnecessary step. You just add it to the other dry ingredients and then add warm liquid.

All that aside, I'd say BDL's analysis is balls on. You actually made a poolish with the entire recipe, and, combined with the more active instant yeast, fermented it into a sourdough starter. At a guess I'd say your kitchen was on the warm side as well.

"Most bread bakers consider it excellent practice to form the loaves, and hold them chilled for up to a day before baking. To repeat: Form, then chill. "

I don't have a clue what "most" bread bakers do, BDL. But many of us, particularly those who follow Peter Reinhart's footsteps, chill the dough overnight before shaping. In fact, the preferment itself is oven chilled overnight, then the final dough mixed and itself chilled, and the bread shaped and baked the third day.

Either way, however, retarding fermentation in the fridge lets the yeast really do the job it's supposed to, yielding a much more flavorsome final bread.

Good call on the Peter Reinhart method. I think he used to form then chill, during his Brother Juniper's period, then switched to chill then form as a way of extending the retarded rises around the time he was writing the first edition of BB'sA. I think I remember the form/chill with either with his flour, water, salt, yeast bread or with Struan (the first generation) in Brother Juniper's.

If you read my bread recipes you know I'm a fan of the extra rise. And while I haven't written the refrigerator/retarded rise into a recipe published on Chef Talk, I do recommend it elsewhere and often use it myself. Recommended not only for the extra taste (especially with poolishes, bigas and sourdoughs), but for the flexibility it gives in timing for people who have to schedule around work. The refrigerator lets you do do everything first thing in the morning, or after you come home.

Anyway, I owe a huge debt to Reinhart and am proud to acknowledge it.

BDL

I didn't "discover" Reinhart until BBA was published. So the Brother Juniper period, to me, is only an historical note in his books. Alas. :(

Something else to point out, for folks with a time crunch, is that many preferments can be frozen. For instance, I make large quantities of Reinhart's pate fermentee at one time, divide into portion sizes, and freeze in zipper bags.

A frozen bag, left in the fridge overnight, defrosts to the same point as if you'd made it the night before and kept it in the fridge. From that point you just proceed with the recipe.

It's a great time saver.

To BFL and KYh:

Would either of you recommend or not recommend - for the final rise - placing the dough in a banneton and then placing the loaded banneton into the refrigerator overnight for a slow rise?

Yes sure.

BDL

PS. A BFL is something else entirely.

"BFL"??? Please explain.

"BFL," as you referred to me, is a motion picture term for a very large light. It can be used to refer to other things beginning with the letter "L". The letters BF are generally slang for "big f**king... But I'm not BF anything, I'm BDL.

kokopuffs, let me quickly add I wasn't trying to "correct you," or call attention to your fallibility because you typoed. It's not like everyone doesn't do it. But sometimes typos are very funny, especially for a guy like me who loves puns all too well.

BDL

No offense taken! Believe me. I was having a BF blonde Polish moment!!!!!!!!!!!! HA!!!!!!.

Getting back to your question: If you have the room and the time, yeah, sure, do it.

Retarded fermentation at any stage of the game can contribute to flavor. Oversimplifying the process; the slower the yeast works, the more sugars are released from their complex chains, and the more time enzymes have to promote the fermentation process.

While this doesn't always happen, it doesn't hurt anything either. For example, Reinhart's Pane Siciliano can be either a two or three day process. You can shape, proof, and bake on the second day. Or you can shape, refrigerate the loaf, and bake on the third day. While many of his people insist the wait is justified, I could discern no difference in the flavor between the two methods. Yet, with other days, the final retardation does contribute to flavor.

My guess is that the dough in your banneton will rise somewhat, overnight, but it won't double. So you may still have to let it rise for an hour or two at room temperature before baking.

That's what I expect. Short rise while cold followed by long slow rise while warming up.