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omitting second proof?


jedovaty

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Hi:

I've had decent success with sourdough bread, having found a timing with two rounds of proofing/proving that results in a decent crumb structure and bread that feels light compared to its size.  I'm starting to cautiously branch out to other yeast-leavened doughs/pastries now, and have run across a few recipes that don't make sense from my perspective of a two-stage proof because they leave out the second proof, i.e. after a bit of time chilling in the fridge, the things are baked right away.  Why?  I'm also guessing these types of recipes probably won't work well using a natural leaven like sourdough...???

 

Soon as I have time, I plan to try baking a loaf of bread as the first rise comes close to completion, I'm really curious to see what happens, but I'm not so inclined to test on other recipes because most of them are a lot of work (e.g. kouign amann, given all the time involved in rolling out, etc ugh).

 

Thanks for your time!

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It depends on the kind of leavened dough and the kind of leavener you are using.
Working with levain / sourdough starter / natural leavener (whatever you call it, something that does NOT include saccharomyces cerevisiae) is one thing, because of all the different microbes involved. Working with commercial yeast (saccharomyces cerevisiae) is another thing, because you are using only one kind of microbe. There are recipes which call for both, trying to get the best of both worlds.
As a general rule, the shorter the fermentation time is, the less flavor is developed, the quicker the final product goes stale.
Working with levain gives you much more flavor, because each different microbe produces different molecules with its metabolism, some of them help retarding the staling process, others are acids. Depending on the culture of the levain (the balance between the various microbes) and the fermentation process (temperature and time) the balance of the produced acids can be pretty different. Levain went through quite a number of previous fermentations, so it carries all the molecules produced before.
Working with commercial yeast gives less flavor because you are using only a kind of microbe, and this microbe has a quicker metabolism. Pre-ferments (poolish, biga...) are used to prolong the fermentation time and thus develop more aromatic molecules. So the more fermenting passages you include in the recipe, the more flavorful the final result. There are recipes that call for a direct fermentation (mix, shape, proof, bake) in only one passage, that's the simplest way but you end up with a product with poor flavor and short shelf life (quick staling).
When a recipe calls for both it's because in such way you get the flavor from the levain, but also the kick and predictability of the commercial yeast.
Laminated doughs for viennoiseries (croissant, danish, laminated brioche and so on, remember that croissant, kouign amann, pain au chocolat, pain au raisins are like brothers) can be made in a variety of ways. You can use only levain, in which case you get great flavour, but fermentation times can vary a lot, plus the crust is not as flaky as when you use commercial yeast (with croissants you want the flakiest crust possible). You can use commercial yeast with the direct method, it's the quickest process with the most consistent results, but less flavor. You can use commercial yeast with a pre-ferment and then added commercial yeast in the final mix (laminated doughs call for strong activity), this way you get good flavor and a good compromise (this is the road followed by lots of professionals for croissants). You can use levain and commercial yeast (no pre-ferment, just the final mix) so you get great flavor and consistent fermentation times, problems are that it takes more work and you loose some flakiness for the crust.
If you want to delve in the viennoiserie world then I would suggest to start with recipes that use only commercial yeast and call for a pre-ferment.

 

 

 

Teo

 

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Teo

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Thanks, that's helpful, you lay out the foundation and underlying reasons for short vs long proofs, and the use of the commercial yeasts vs home-grown ones.  It seems then, that the purpose of omitting the second proof is to remove the flavor component of the yeast/flour/sugar interaction, and then let the ingredients themselves come through.  I thought it might be more texture related, too.  This is where I shrug and say okay?

 

And thank you for the new term: " viennoiserie"  :)  That is precisely what I plan to explore this winter!

 

Slight tangent, and going to explore path of croissant vs kouign aman, as that's a fairly easy comparison for me to capture. 

 

Earlier this year, I had a modicum of success with making croissants that used a combination of yeast and sourdough, but was distracted by something else before I could explore further.  Many recipes also suggest using an osmotolerant yeast, which I've researched and understand it helps speed up the process a little.

 

I've read that croissants may leak when baked if not proofed correctly (i.e. leak if underproofed; also, understood there may be other factors contributing to the leaking).  How does this, then, work for recipes which call for minimal or no second proof, such as the kouign aman?  Is the leakage somewhat desired in this case, to "fry" the dough a bit with the sugar?  Why is the proof time in some KA recipes removed?  Is it to reduce the "chewiness" that could be caused by the extra salt and improve the tenderness of the dough, or to bring more focus onto the flavor of the butter, sugar, and salt?  Am I splitting hairs?  These questions may simply not have an answer and be rhetorical, and I may just have to run my own tests to see why.  Of course, baseline recipe first to have a standard to compare to.

Edited by jedovaty (log)
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6 hours ago, jedovaty said:

It seems then, that the purpose of omitting the second proof is to remove the flavor component of the yeast/flour/sugar interaction, and then let the ingredients themselves come through.

 

I would say it's more to save time and work. Lower costs for the professionals, easier to reproduce for the home cooks.

 

 

 

6 hours ago, jedovaty said:

I thought it might be more texture related, too.  This is where I shrug and say okay?

 

It affects texture too, but in a minor way. During each fermentation (if done correctly) the microbes consume carbs and not proteins (they consume proteins if the setting is wrong, mainly low pH, but since it's wrong it's not what you want to happen). This means you end up with less sugar and starches, while keeping the same amount of gluten. You just need to check the weight of the dough before proofing it and after proofing it, it looses a sensible % of weight (solids that are transformed in gases). If you proof a dough, punch it down, proof it again, punch it down, proof it again, you end up with a different starch / gluten ration than if proofing it only once, so you end up with different texture too. But this is a side effect, not the reason why people create recipes with one single fermentation.

 

 

6 hours ago, jedovaty said:

Slight tangent, and going to explore path of croissant vs kouign aman, as that's a fairly easy comparison for me to capture. 

 

The difference is in the lamination (what you include in the dough and how you do it), not in the dough itself. The base dough for croissant, kouign amann, pain au chocolat and pain au raisins is the same. What's different is the rest of the process. You need to look as laminated doughs as 2 different phases: the dough (which is the phase that's going to proof) and the inclusion (which will act as a barrier between the layers). They are laminated, not mixed, so they remain separated.

 

 

 

6 hours ago, jedovaty said:

Many recipes also suggest using an osmotolerant yeast, which I've researched and understand it helps speed up the process a little.

 

Osmotolerant yeast is used when you need yeast cells thatcan survive with high osmotic pressure. The higher the % of sugar and salt (compared to the free water) in a recipe, the higher the osmotic pressure. When osmotic pressure exceeds a certain value the yeast cells are going to die (osmotic pressure destroys their cell walls), this value depends on the yeast strain. Osmotolerant yeasts are the ones that can survive to higher osmotic pressure than the other yeasts, but they have their limits too.

 

 

 

6 hours ago, jedovaty said:

I've read that croissants may leak when baked if not proofed correctly (i.e. leak if underproofed; also, understood there may be other factors contributing to the leaking).  How does this, then, work for recipes which call for minimal or no second proof, such as the kouign aman?

 

Seems like you are confusing something. What's fundamental is the final proof, the one you make after shaping the bread / pastry and before baking. That's done for every kind of leavened product. The difference is if there is a pre-ferment, a levain or else, meaning the fermentation stages are more than 1. But you can't think as the final fermentation as a number and the pre-ferment/else as another number. The final proof is the real and fundamental one, it's not the first or the second or whatever. You can add more fermentation processes before that, but you can't call one of them first and the other second. Simply because the fundamental one is the last, not the first.

 

 

 

6 hours ago, jedovaty said:

Why is the proof time in some KA recipes removed?

 

Proofing times are guidelines, not a rule. Each batch has different times, you need to get the due experience and learn how to check if the dough id perfectly proofed, you can't base this decision on a timer.

 

 

 

6 hours ago, jedovaty said:

Is it to reduce the "chewiness" that could be caused by the extra salt and improve the tenderness of the dough, or to bring more focus onto the flavor of the butter, sugar, and salt?

 

The extra salt is added in the inclusion. The inclusion has almost no effect on proofing times. Fermentation happens in the dough, not in the inclusion, they are two different and separated phases.

 

 

 

Teo

 

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Teo

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Fun :)  you've answered some questions I didn't know I had, and, subsequently, now I've got more - I will return to them later.  For now I'd like to return to my original question, and present it differently it in the hopes it either gets answered or, helps me lead me to one.  Regardless, I will likely end up doing the testing myself later.

As you wrote, the base dough for many of these are the same, so let's compare croissant vs kouign aman.  Please follow along my thought process:

1. Both have mostly the same dough that gets mixed and then rested along with initial bulk fermentation prior to lamination in a cold environment

2. The lamination steps are pretty much the same, except some KA recipes use salted butter instead of regular butter

3. The traditional KA recipes add/sprinkle/dump sugar and salt at the start of the lamination, but I'm going to stick with the recipes that add sugar/salt at the last turn or right before shaping, a these seem to favor my specific situation better (types of ingredients available, environment, etc***)

4. Except for the butter and the sugar/salt, the lamination process is the same: roll, fold, chill - 3 turns

5. After lamination comes the final roll out and shaping

6a. Croissants undergo final proof then baked

6b. KA are baked right away

 

#6 is where KA and croissants are totally different: croissant recipes want the final proof to go until the shapes are jiggly and well poofed up.  As you said, this time can vary tremendously - when I did it, it took nearly 8 hours, my ambient temp was 68F and I used a mixture of commercial yeast with sourdough.  This is versus KA recipes which instruct the home baker to bake the KA right away, or at longest, suggest to rest for 10-15 minutes.  That's very different from croissant, and therein lies my question:  why are the final proof times different between KA vs croissant?

 

I hope this makes sense now.  From my perspective, the viennoiserie are nearly identical, except for the shape itself and the final proof.  From my experience with bread, my standard dough recipe bakes different if I bake the bread right after shaping vs. one more proof until it passes the ubiquitous poke test.

 

***more on this later, for now, I'm hoping to cover one thing at a time :)

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9 hours ago, jedovaty said:

why are the final proof times different between KA vs croissant?

 

Probably because you are looking at the wrong recipes... If you are looking at recipes found on the internet then you should be much more careful about choosing which sites to read. There are tons (the vast majority) of food sites that write low quality stuff.

KA is proofed after shaping and before baking, as are all leavened items, it's the very definition for a leavened item.

The very definition for traditional KA is using salted butter in the inclusion, that's what they did when the recipe was created, that's what they still do in Brittany. A recipe that does not state this basic stuff is totally unreliable. You said you read KA recipes where they call for not salt or added salt in the inclusion, this means no one of those recipes specified that fact about salted butter. You had better to delete from your memory all those recipes, their are faulty.

This is a clear example of all the crap that can happen online. KA was totally unknown outside Brittany up to about 10 years ago. Then some pastry shops in Paris started making it. Then it reached the USA and became famous through Dominique Ansel. Then lots of people jumped on the bandwagon without checking what they were doing, writing lots of crap. You can notice this just checking if they talk about salted butter. If they don't, then it's just a recipe copied from another recipe copied from another one copied from another one, all of them wrong. Just because "everyone makes KA now, so I need to add it to my site to be cool".

I strongly suggest you to check better your sources and not trust everything you find on internet, since the vast majority of the stuff you find on internet is unreliable crap.

Best thing you can do is building some solid foundations reading some quality books, like the one by Hamelman.

 

 

 

10 hours ago, jedovaty said:

From my experience with bread, my standard dough recipe bakes different if I bake the bread right after shaping vs. one more proof until it passes the ubiquitous poke test.

 

When you shape a bread you press out almost all the gas that formed during the previous fermentation stage (if there was one), so you need another fermentation stage to let the dough form gas inside it and leaven again. I prefer to not know where you read a recipe that called for baking a bread just after shaping it and without the proper fermentation stage.

I repeat, I strongly suggest you to check your sources. Which means avoiding most of the stuff on internet and reading reliable sources (mostly books by reliable professionals).

 

 

 

Teo

 

Teo

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2 hours ago, keychris said:

Just to make it more complicated for you, Daniel Alvarez recently did a kouign-amann recipe for savour online classes and his recipe has a two hour proof after being placed in the moulds.

 

Saveur has on-line classes?

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3 hours ago, teonzo said:

When you shape a bread you press out almost all the gas that formed during the previous fermentation stage (if there was one), so you need another fermentation stage to let the dough form gas inside it and leaven again. I prefer to not know where you read a recipe that called for baking a bread just after shaping it and without the proper fermentation stage.

I repeat, I strongly suggest you to check your sources. Which means avoiding most of the stuff on internet and reading reliable sources (mostly books by reliable professionals).

I baked bread after shaping to see what happens.  I've also baked when it was well under-proofed, and over-proofed, etc.

 

You seem a little agitated with my questions and statements, but please don't be.  I'm just learning.  You don't know me, what I will share is that I tend to question everything and like to do my own testing, but before testing, I like to get a correct baseline.  With regards to the KA, I'm having trouble narrowing this down.  Many recipes I read that I believe to be credible, omit the final proof, and here you are very passionate now that this is wrong.  I don't believe everything I read, and therefore, I'd like to get to the bottom of it! :)

 

Here are a few kouign amann recipies / technique demonstrations which don't call for a final proof after shaping.  I'm pretty comfortable with the credibility of these sources.

 

Dominique Ansel, he's quite famous here in the US, being a french import.  I actually had his KA last weekend on a trip in NY, they were out of cronuts so I tried the KA, a cookie shot, and pain au chocolat.  The KA and cookie shot were pretty good (my only other comparison to KA thus far has been Mr. Holmes bakery in San Francisco a couple years ago).  His KA was quite lightweight, nicely crisp on outside, very tender inside, good layering.  Almost what I expected.  His Pain Au Chocolat wasn't very good though, giant air cavity and collapsed crumb, no honecomb at all.

 

David Liebovitz:

https://www.davidlebovitz.com/long-live-the-k/

 

This french dude seems official and bakes right away:

 

 

I think this french guy here has a famous bakery, and from what I can tell he does a very short final proof before baking:

 

Then there's Chefsteps which don't quite follow the traditional path, but also bake right away (or put away in fridge):

https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/kouign-amann--2

 

There are several more I'm happy to share.  If you are concerned over the credibility of the above, I'm more than ready to review and try other recipes :)

 

End of the day, I will do my own testing, but again, I do want to have a baseline recipe.

 

Hopefully this is clear!

 

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5 hours ago, keychris said:

Just to make it more complicated for you, Daniel Alvarez recently did a kouign-amann recipe for savour online classes and his recipe has a two hour proof after being placed in the moulds.

Hah!  :)

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  • 4 weeks later...

First couple kouign amann bakes with active yeast were mostly successful (good layers, crispy carmelized exterior, tender crumb, lightweight feel), however, I am still confused and don't know what's going on with fermentation due to my inexperience with commercial yeast.

 

I think I have a way to get there, though, perhaps if we overlay the pastry from mix to bake with my workflow for sourdough bread: add leaven to dough, wait for 50-70% rise, shape, put in fridge for at least 8 hours, then bake.  Sometimes I skip the fridge, and bake 30 minutes to 3 hours, depending on several factors.

 

Based on this, where in the timeline - relative to my sourdough bread - does one begin the lamination, where does the lamination end, and then where in the process does the bake occur?  Hope this question makes sense.

 

Thanks for your time!

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