I haven't, but I still need to do a comparison between common starches. Waiting to sort out my vegan brioche formula before I do! (The last few tests have been disasters lol.)
Ugh, I feel for you, testing can get so annoying!! At least for me it’s always just when I think I’m nearly there, the next seven batches of whatever I’m testing fail completely!
Really enjoyed the deep dive in this post. Kudos to you for the massive amount of testing that must have gone in to arriving at these practices/conclusions! Can't wait for Breaducation!
If one of the purposes of keeping though dough under 75˚F while mixing is to keep the fat emulsified in the dough, is there any concern with losing that emulsion during the final proof, which is >75˚F? Evidently 80˚F is cool enough to not be an issue from your testing; I don't have a great temperature controlled proofing container, though, so I typically do the "off oven with light on" approach which does a fine job of getting things warm but makes it hard to know exactly what temperature I'm hitting.
Gabriel - I'm a little skeptical about the risks of an emulsion breaking, but it's most likely to happen during mixing *as it is forming,* not once the dough is mixed, which is why it's not really an issue during the final proof. In any case, it is also important to keep the dough on the cool side during mixing to avoid overproofing, which is another reason to keep ingredients cold at that stage. 80F is ideal for the final proof, but I'm pretty sure it can tolerate higher temperatures, perhaps up to 85F.
omg. How do you keep all these details straight? I'm looking forward to the B&H Challah recipe! And all the other ones. Thank you for all this work Andrew, and also for being the beneficiary of some of your test loaves.
Fantastic-
I’ve been using potato starch in my wash these days, too, and it browns so well, but sometimes almost too well! Do you find that?
I haven't, but I still need to do a comparison between common starches. Waiting to sort out my vegan brioche formula before I do! (The last few tests have been disasters lol.)
Ugh, I feel for you, testing can get so annoying!! At least for me it’s always just when I think I’m nearly there, the next seven batches of whatever I’m testing fail completely!
yep. I love sorting out bread science mysteries, but it’s getting expensive and wasteful in this instance!
Really enjoyed the deep dive in this post. Kudos to you for the massive amount of testing that must have gone in to arriving at these practices/conclusions! Can't wait for Breaducation!
If one of the purposes of keeping though dough under 75˚F while mixing is to keep the fat emulsified in the dough, is there any concern with losing that emulsion during the final proof, which is >75˚F? Evidently 80˚F is cool enough to not be an issue from your testing; I don't have a great temperature controlled proofing container, though, so I typically do the "off oven with light on" approach which does a fine job of getting things warm but makes it hard to know exactly what temperature I'm hitting.
Gabriel - I'm a little skeptical about the risks of an emulsion breaking, but it's most likely to happen during mixing *as it is forming,* not once the dough is mixed, which is why it's not really an issue during the final proof. In any case, it is also important to keep the dough on the cool side during mixing to avoid overproofing, which is another reason to keep ingredients cold at that stage. 80F is ideal for the final proof, but I'm pretty sure it can tolerate higher temperatures, perhaps up to 85F.
omg. How do you keep all these details straight? I'm looking forward to the B&H Challah recipe! And all the other ones. Thank you for all this work Andrew, and also for being the beneficiary of some of your test loaves.