So, today I did my usual seat-of-the-pants, no-recipe, no-rules sourdough bread, starting with a sponge, a rise, and a second rise in bread pans.
Only … I forgot to check the bread for a long time on the second rise, and it over-rose. Experience tells me that while I could have put it in the oven and gotten an edible result, it would have been something like this. In other words, it would have collapsed a bit in the oven, with a caved-in top instead of a nice dome.
So instead I punched it down and let it do a third rise. I know that the second rise is usually shorter than the first so I thought maybe the third rise would be even shorter. Indeed it was (about 2.5 hours for the first rise, two hours probably would have been good for the second, and the third rise was only 1 hour).
This can’t go on forever. Somehow I doubt that rise #17 would be a mere 5 minutes, producing an intensely delicious loaf (since my understanding is that two rises are better than one, as the flavor develops more).
All comments welcome. The loaves are now in the oven, looking and smelling quite delicious, so I think in this case I made the right choice. But I wasn’t really sure what I was doing.
Is the question part in here? According to various sites, a yeast generation is around 90 minutes. So every hour and a half the population doubles, given proper conditions. It can’t go on forever, but it can go on until they run out of a critical nutrient or are killed by their own accumulating waste products.
Yeah, I didn’t really ask a question in my OP, did I? Let me remedy that with some specific ones:
Is it generally true that “more rises = more flavor”? Why is that?
Why does a second rise generally take less time than than the first rise?
Common sense tells me that at some point, the system is going to break down. It may well be the case that a batch of bread that rises three times is more flavorful than the same recipe that rises twice, and both have more developed flavor than the same recipe that rose only once. But where does this progression max out, and why? Would 4 or 5 risings, if one had the patience, be even better than 2 or 3?
Similarly, the “each rise takes a shorter period than the previous rise” rule is going to break down as well. When and why does this rule typically stop working?
I can answer 2:
Yeast is converting sugar into C02, alcohol, and baby yeasts. Over time as the yeast continues to divide there is more and more yeast, and thus more C02 being produced at any one time.
Judging from the posts already in this thread, it would be wise for someone like me to closely follow a set of directions. The process seems fraught with danger unless one really knows what one is doing.
If you go overboard, can a loaf rise out of control and “pop”, or is that just a slapstick comedy shtick designed for laughs?
I can’t say a thing about flavor, but as tofor and I mentioned, like any living thing, a yeast population will expand until it can’t expand any more. With animals without predators or diseases limiting them, that expansion ends when there are more of the animal than there is nutrition to support them, or they sufficate on their own waste products. Rising times get shorter because the yeast population doubles every couple of hours. Population growth stops when they have consumed the last of some critical nutrient or when they have choked to death on all of their waste products (such as all of that CO2 yeast is releasing).
(ETA and, actually, I can say something about flavor: with each passing moment, that dough contains less wheat(?)-produced molecules and more yeast-produced molecules. The same atoms reconfigured in different ways trigger different receptors on your taste buds. Making bread, like making cheese or beer or many other things, is less about simple chemistry and more about letting some other organism eat part of it and enjoying their tangy poop.)
So, let’s say I’m cooking some yeast based thing. What’s the “Goldilocks Zone”? Do I want total expansion of whatever amount of yeast that I happened to use? If that’s the case, the variable or controlling factor is the amount of yeast used, and the constant is total expansion. In other words, if I wanted to tinker with the final result, would I just concentrate on amount and always strive for total expansion?
I’m trying to get basic feel for this. I’ve never cooked a yeast based recipe!
I’ve only ever used the frozen dough that you find in grocery stores. My rigorous testing consists of taking it out of the freezer, letting it sit, and at some point thinking “that looks about right.”.
@Darren_Garrison - thank you, that’s exactly the explanation I was looking for. It seems so obvious now, but I hadn’t figured that out on my own.
@Jasmine - bread making is far less scary than it might seem to a novice, as it’s hard to completely wreck the product. It might not come out exactly as you’d hoped, and you might have to be a little creative along the way, but chances are pretty good your bread will be worth eating no matter what. When I started bread-baking, the big mistake I used to make was killing the yeast with water that was too hot, but you can fix that a couple of ways (besides learning what the right temperature feels like when you dip a finger in, which is what I do now) - if your dough lump doesn’t rise at all, you can try kneading in another spoonful of yeast. Assuming the problem wasn’t that you were starting with dead yeast to begin with, that should take care of it. Or, give up and just roll out the dough into thin rounds, brush olive oil on top and sprinkle with herbs and salt, bake it and call it focaccia.
The one mistake that makes the dough unsalvageable, in my experience, is if the bread rises far too much, like if you forget it for half a day or something. How will you know if the bread is beyond hope? Well, for one thing it smells yucky. That wasn’t the case with the dough mentioned in my OP. It was too “puffy” looking and loose, but it smelled just fine, which is why I decided to give the third rise a try.
A good way to develop this flavor – and it’s not going to be as strong as something like a straight-up sourdough culture – is through a cold rise/cold ferment. I will usually do my bread and pizza doughs over the course of three or four days in the fridge to develop their flavor. You just start with less yeast than normal, and then chuck it in the fridge about halfway through the first rise (about 8-10 hours for the amount of yeast I use). When ready to use, do your second rise at room temp as usual and then bake.
I was actually surprised to find out yesterday that you can do a same-day bread without any real kneading or use of a stand mixer. This is the video my friend introduced me to (it’s in Italian, but you can get the gist–turn on CC):
500g flour
400g water (so 80% hydration dough)
3g dry yeast
5g salt
You just mix it together well with some chopsticks or whatever; wait an hour and then give it a few folds to stretch out the gluten), wait another hour, turn it out on a board and cover it, wait another 15 minutes, then bake (exact steps in the description.)
And, holy crap, that works well and you don’t have to wait overnight like with a normal no-knead recipe. I made some dough in the early afternoon that I turned into a sheet-pan pizza in the evening (was going to bake bread, but my kids overruled me), and it turned out lovely!
Decent holes, very light mouthfeel. Minimal work and time. Definitely will do again.
