Help needed - malty raisin loaf

[Theo]

I've been trying to come up with a dark, malty, raisiny loaf raised with yeast. My two attempts so far have produced loaves that taste good, but don't rise properly. Can anyone suggest improvements to ingredients/quantities/ method?

Here's the recipe:

150ml porter, boiled to remove alcohol then cooled
90g barley malt syrup
1 tbs black treacle (molasses, to any USers out there)
1 tbs fresh yeast

Above all blended, then mixed with:

250g rågsikt (a Swedish flour blend of roughly 60% white flour 40% sifted rye)
150g wholemeal flour
95g light muscovado sugar
1 tsp salt
45g sunflower oil
150g raisins

whole sticky mass kneaded; bulk ferment 1hr; proved 2hrs; baked 200C 45mins.

The loaf came out very dense, which isn't a problem, but also with a doughy centre, which is. The quantity of yeast seems necessary to make the stuff rise at all, but would like to reduce this if poss. Also want to try this with sourdough, but haven't got round to it yet. Perhaps a mix of sourdough and yeast would help?

Any suggestions?

[chefcdp]

I think that the results could be improved with longer fermenting times and the use of a sourdough starter.

If I were to take a run at changing the procedures for your recipe, here is what I would do as a first try.

Take about 50 or 60 grams of your stock natural leaven (wheat, whole wheat, or rye it doesn't matter)

Add all of the cooled beer and enough of the rye/white four blend to make a stiff starter. Actually as much of he blend as I could without turning it into a brick. Ferment the starter at room temperature until risen and then retard at least over night.

Take the starter and add all of the other ingredients except the raisins and mix and knead. I would use Dan's intermittent kneading process, but that is up to you. Blend in the raisins.

Give the dough an hour or two of floor time until you see the dough begin to move. Then retard the dough over night.

Allow the dough to warm for a couple of hours at room temperature, then scale, form and mold. Allow the dough to fully rise because you will not get much oven spring.

If the results were still too dense, I would swap out the whole meal flour for strong white flour.

I know that I have turned this into a three day bread, but you do need to give the Bread Faeries time to do their magic.

Good luck.

Charles

[Nils]

Sounds yummy. In addition to Charles's points; I've noticed that the amount of ingredients containing lots of sugar and fat is very high, even when not taking into account the the raisins. Rye flour without souring by a starter also makes a rather compact loaf. So adding sourdough seems a really good idea to me (and maybe tweaking the flour/sugar ratio a little).

Regards,
Nils

[Theo]

Thanks, guys.

Charles - what is the thinking behind the overnight retardations? This is not something I've experimented with much, but when I have I've had mixed results.

Sounds like sourdough is the way to go, though. I'm out of malt syrup, but when I get some more, I'll let you know how it turns out.

[chefcdp]

There are two types of advantages gained by retarding. First is production scheduling.

Retarding the starter gives you control over the time when you mix the final dough. I said overnight, however the retard time can be much longer. It is possible to put the starter away on a Friday night and use it Monday morning.

Retarding the rye starter also allows it to become a sour, sourdough. With a high percentage of rye in the dough, you want an acid starter to inhibit the destruction of the rye starches that compensate for the low gluten in rye.

Doing most of the first fermentation of the dough in the cooler widens the window of time for the following steps. Since you determine when you take the dough out to warm up, you control when that window opens. You have some flexibility. I have not pushed it so I don't know how long you actually could leave the dough retarded, but certainly some time longer than just overnight.

The other class of advantages to retarding is flavor development. Without getting into the science of it, because I don't understand it well enough to give a good explanation, here is a rule of thumb. Within limits, the longer you can keep more of the flour wet, the better chance of improved flavor.

This explains Bigas, Poolish, old dough, soakers, autolyse, and mixed starter methods used to improve flavor.

In the case of natural leavens, you have competing processes. The sourdough first improves the formation of gluten and then as fermentation proceeds, it begins to destroy gluten.

There are two flavor enhancing types of reactions going on. You have the byproducts of natural fermentation by the sourdough. and the enzyme reactions by the natural enzymes present in the flour.

To get the most flavor, you want the sourdough fermentation to go as far as possible without destroying the ability of the dough to hold together. You would also like the natural flour enzyme reactions to go on as long as possible.

Retarding or cool/cold fermenting seems to slow the gluten destroying process while allowing the flour enzyme reactions to continue. I don't always note an improvement in flavor with all recipes, but I certainly do with a rye bread similar to yours.

Until there is solid science that we all can understand, please consider my comments as speculation and certainly not facts. However it is speculation that fits my personal observations.


I agree with the comment that your recipe seems on the sweet side. With the malt syrup and molasses, I am not sure that the sugar is necessary.

Regards,

Charles

[Theo]

There is some method in this - it may look oversweet, but in fact the sweetness in the final loaf is moderate. Apart from the fact that muscovado sugar has its own taste that contributes to the mix, it also balances out the bitter flavours in the porter - which in turn has a lot of malty, liquoricey flavours that I want. I suppose I also just like the idea of a beery barmy loaf. I think cutting down the sugar and/or malt may help the rise, though.

In terms of the retardation, I wondered if there was any specific relavance to this rather rich, heavy dough beyond the role in flavour development and timing.

Thanks for the input.