Baker's secrets untold

Hello everyone ! This is a column with some tech tips which are sometimes simple but also very effective.
When you have to put your hands into the practical thing, which in our case is the act of baking, those little tricks can be very handy.
When I started collecting books and surfing the net for informations I found a lack of those little tips which are usually a product of countless working hours (read "nights") with the hands in the doughs. Therefore I started thinking: "when I will have a space to write about baking, I will include also some tricks I learnt trought my baking journey".
Here we go ! This is the space, and here you will find some tips which can give your baking a turn...
...Or maybe not ?
Actually it' s not like that, but I am sure some of you will find the tips interesting and sometimes those tricks will make your life (unfortunately only baking life) easier.

Secret Untold  n1

Fermentation sign 

Air trapped into the gluten net in a well fermented dough. 

You have just mixed with love this beautiful dough, it' s time to let it sit and ferment properly but you never tried this recipe before and don't have a clue on how to see when the fermentation is optimal ?

Don' t worry and make a Fermentation Sign

How do you do ?

Simple, cut off a small piece (let' s say 20 grams will do) from your main dough before you put it into the bucket. Round the piece of dough a bit and put into a little jar or whathever you have that can hold 4 times the volume of the little dough ball. Cover with room temperature water.

This is your Fermentation Sign. Put it near the main dough, as it neeeds equal conditions of temperature etc, and it will rise at the same speed. 

How can I "read" the sign? 

When the little ball comes to the surface and floats into the water, means that the fermentation is at a good point and you can go ahead with the recipe.

A slightly different method can be used when working with super wet doughs (high hydration doughs etc). Instead of using water, make a mark where the little ball is reaching at the start of the fermentation and look for a 100% increasing in volume. There are exceptions to this volume increase but they are usually specified in the recipes (like in Panettone which needs to triple in size).

Conclusions:

This method can be apply to virtually every dough; From mother doughs to the first stage of multiple doughs recipes , stiff starters, pre-ferments, sweet doughs and so on.

It' s usefull when you are using a new recipe because you don' t really know the right timing of fermentation due to the many variables that can change the time amount.

It' s way easier to understand when a little ball of dough is doubled than a 5 kg mass.

Hope this can be useful, and have good bakes !

Secret Untold  n2

Pasta Madre (stiff sourdough) tips

Mature Pasta Madre

As we have seen in the previous post about Pasta Madre, this sourdough consists of a stiff paste that, when ripen, will give life to our doughs. 

But did you know that there are some tricks which can improve the quality of this ferment?

So take your pen and paper because we will see a few! 

1.

When using a stiff starter (and even more if it' s old), one of the most important thing is to oxygenate bacterias and yeasts colonies. If you just throw the paste into water or a mix, it will break in many little clumps. At the end it will incorporate to the dough pretty good (with kneading machines even better). But not much oxygen will reach the microorganisms.

So how we can improve oxygenation? I found that the use of a cutter/blender will do the work really good!

When I have to refresh Pasta Madre or use it for a dough, I take a part or even all the water (depending on recipe), put the Pasta Madre in and blend it with the cutter. 

A good amount of bubbles will start to create due to the incorporation of air (and so oxygen) into the water. This will make your bacterias and yeasts very happy! 

A little consideration I have to do, is that if you want more acidity and less rising power, you should avoid this.

2.

Sometimes we may need to lower the Ph level of our Pasta Madre. This will improve acetic acids levels as well as keeping the yeasts in control. A lower Ph (Let' s say around 4.0 - 3.9) will bring to the final product more sourness as well as improving shelf life. 

A good trick is to laminate the Pasta Madre.

How we do that? Let' s start from the beginning:

First of all we have to refresh our Pasta Madre. So we make the mix taking care of don't develope the gluten structure too much. In a similar way to croissant dough, which should be a little under-developed before lamination process, we need to finish the dough developement while laminating it. Otherwise, the lamination process will be too difficoult due to thelack of extensibility of the Pasta Madre.

So we have our Pasta Madre mixed. Now we will proceed like a regular lamination, taking care to push out of the dough every gas retained in it. Then roll the laminated dough. Repeat 3 to 4 times until the dough is nice and sleek but not too refined. This will create a perfect anaerobic environment which will favour bacterias work as well as cut down yeasts reproduction.

Sorry for the technicians around, I did simplify a bit things to be understood better by anyone.