I decided to make the Lithuanian “Christmas Bread” from Stanley Ginsberg’s “The Rye Baker”. 100% rye (mostly light), slightly sweetened, with chopped prunes, dried apricots and raisins, two stage sourdough build. It all went well until the final proof, which Stanley directed to be done in an oven preheated to 100 F and turned off. I thought “Phht, I can just use my proofing box!” and proceeded to set it for 100, not thinking about the fact that the 100 degree oven will start cooling immediately upon putting the bread in, and that 100 is a bit higher than yeast can live at. Definitely a face palm moment. It was supposed to proof until the bread rose to the top of the pan, and it never really budged, even after proofing twice as long as it should have taken.
Like most bread “fails”, it still came out tasting great, just rather denser than it should have been.
Sorry to hear this Eric, we all have these moments so don’t feel to badly. At least you still enjoyed the flavour of the bread in the end. You’ll never do this again that’s for sure.
Happy New Year
Benny
I’m more amused by my mistake than anything. It good to remind yourself that if this is the worst thing that’s happened to you today, you’re doing pretty well!
In reading what you wrote I am not seeing anywhere that you did anything wrong. Bakers yeast (commercial yeast) is very happy at 100°F. It starts to die somewhere above 115°F. There is no reason a healthy yeast would not be very happily inside a 100°F proofing box. When I make yeasted bread (focaccia) I start by mixing the yeast in 110°F water.
I suggest looking at two things; (1) verify your proofing box is functioning at 100°F when set at that temperature, and (2) verify the quality of the yeast you are using. To check the yeast, take a pinch and put it in a bowl of warm water, 105-115°F and see how it responds after 10 minutes. It should look a little bubbly and smell very yeasty. If not, your yeast was probably dead before you added it to the recipe.
I forget where I read this, or what the wording was, but somewhere I got the idea that 95 was about as high as you should keep your yeast at for an extended period. I’m sure it depends on how long the temperature remains that high, and the exact varieties of yeast involved–the random species one might expect in a sourdough starter that’s mostly lives in the fridge is probably not optimal for high heat living. Of course what I read might be unreliable too…I’ll have to find it again.
Checking the accuracy of the proofing box at 100 is a good idea, Otis, thanks.
Ganzle published this chart in a paper that shows that yeast activity drops to zero at 95°F. Now that doesn’t necessarily mean that above that temperature they die, but their activity stops.
I’ve been following this thread and first have a few questions: Is it the Brod and Taylor proofing box that you have? Did you take the temperature of the dough after you proofed it and gave up?
I use the Brod and Taylor box regularly. If I take a dough or starter from my 65F kitchen and put it in the proofer (the highest I’ve ever tried for was 85F), depending on the amount of dough or starter, it could take many hours for the internal temp of the dough to reach 85F. If 100F was going to kill your dough, I think the dough would’ve risen on its way to 100F and then, if truly dead, it would’ve collapsed. This is just a gut feeling for how I think the proofer works. It doesn’t create an air tight environment like an oven. The dough was not surrounded by constant 100F temps like in an oven. This is a completely unscientific answer!! Just my basic understanding of how the proofer works. So…I’m guessing your dough just needed more time!
This suggests it is not possible to make bread, naturally leavened or with baker’s yeast, when the ambient temp is over 95°F. I am inclined to think that is not the case. Does the Ganzle paper indicate if the data is for commercial yeast, wild yeast, or maybe that doesn’t matter?
ETA: we like L. sanfranciscensis. When I proof San Francisco sourdough loafs I do it at 85-90°F. Even at the higher temp I do not see a difference in yeast performance. It may because of what Arlo48 mentioned; the time it takes the heat to penetrate the dough allows the inside of the loaf to proof.
Yes, I’m using the Brod and Taylor. I did not take the temperature of the dough, unfortunately. I wasn’t really thinking about diagnosing the problem at the time, I was just feeling that I’d given it more than enough time and it was time to cut my losses and bake.
What you say makes sense, @Arlo48, so I don’t know. It was (I think) 6 hours at that point. I’m not sure what temperature the dough was going into the box but the sponge and the water was warm so I think it was at least in the 70s possibly in the 80s. I suppose it could have risen much more quickly than I expected and fallen already before I checked it. (I no longer recall when I first checked it…possibly I got distracted by something and it could have been a couple hours in).
It was supposed to proof 1-3 hours, but my starter typically requires longer than Stanley’s suggested times. There was no bulk ferment in this recipe, though the 2-stage sponge was a large percentage of the dough. Still, at that high a proofing temperature it should have risen to some degree by then if it was going to rise at all.
As to the way the proofer works…I think I recall some caveat in the instructions, that it is designed to produce the set temperature in the dough, not at the heating plate itself. So I think the heating plate would be over 100 to account for non-airtightness to get the dough to 100.
I think you’re on to something when you say it might have risen and fallen by the time you checked it, especially knowing now it might’ve been in there for six hours! So I take back what I said about it needing more time. I bet it rose pretty fast if the sponge and water were already in the 70s or 80s. I bake rye bread often (a tried and true recipe) and the final proof usually doesn’t take much longer than the time it takes to preheat the oven, about an hour. I have Ginsberg’s book and will look up this recipe. It sounds good with all the dried fruit. I mill my flour and don’t sift it, so for me his recipes never turn out as intended since his usually call for light or medium rye, but they’re always good. Thanks for inspiring me!
I think you’re probably right, that this is the most likely explanation. I’d normally expect to see residue of the rise and fallback, but this was a greased pan, and I wasn’t looking for it, and probably only giving it half attention (my memory is already hazy, but I think I must have been distracted. I’ve been taking notes on each loaf lately in a notebook, and didn’t log this one at all.)
This recipe is well worth making. The fruit gives it a nice sweet / tartness balance without it seeming like an actual dessert bread. I’d make it again even if it always came out this dense!
Like you I mill my own flour and rarely sift. Whole grain rye is a pretty close substitute for medium rye which is what many of the Rye Baker recipes use. In this case, it calls for light rye and I did sift for it, but I’ve just used whole rye instead of light in some recipes and had it come out fine. Do you have any favorites from this book?
I can’t say I have any favorites from The Rye Baker. I tried a few but they didn’t become part of my regular rotation. That was a few years ago, so now that I consider myself a more experienced rye baker, I want to go back and try them again, or others that look so tempting (including the one you mentioned). I’m mostly drawn to recipes that are 100% rye, or a high percentage. The recipe I use all the time and know by heart is one I found on The Fresh Loaf called Almost Purely Sourdough Rye. I’ve adapted it to what works for me: I don’t knead it, and I don’t shape it but rather scoop it into a parchment-lined loaf pan. Also, I use some caramel color that I learned to make from The Rye Baker. I’ve done variations like adding raisins, or seeds on top. If you have any Ginsberg recipes you recommend, let me know! I really am inspired to explore that book again.
I was trying to prepare a new starter from it’s freeze-dried state by carefully following the instructions provided by the seller.
The 1st step was easy; add flour and water, then let it work between @ 90°F for a fixed time, then 70° for another period. Our oven had no issue with proofing @ 90° but wouldn’t go to 70°. So I thought, ‘no problem!’ I used a time-proven trick suggested by others to leave it in the oven with only the light turned on. Then I went to bed.
The next morning, I retrieved the starter but thought the container felt oddly warm. I checked the starter’s temperature and was horrified to discover it was 112°! It had a nice light brown, velvety texture on the top. Subsequent attempts to revive it were in vain…
Ouch! I guess ovens vary a lot in how well they contain heat, and maybe oven lights in how hot they are, making these sorts of instructions dicey. I guess on the positive side, you oven’s probably very energy efficient!
I’d been meaning to reply to this, @Arlo48 , but needed to have my book handy while on the computer! I’ve been happy with most of the rye baker recipes, and continue to try different ones, or make off-the-cuff variations based on techniques in the book, but like you, I haven’t hit on one that’s become a clear regular rotation bread. But a couple of the “novelty” recipes really stand out in my memory as worth repeating: Vinschgau Twins (rolls flavored with blue fenugreek…a really delightful and unusual fragrance if you can get a hold of some), Honey-Flaxseed crispbread, and Swabian Rye blossons (rolled up rolls with onion, ham, cheese).
The latter are supposed to be flaky but I’ve made them with far less butter than called for–by mistake!..I just spread what seemed to me like a reasonable amount of butter when doing the laminations without having payed any attention to the quantity it actually called for. Chalk that up to having no experience making flaky laminated doughs. However as made this way they are still amazing, and read more like a stromboli than anything flaky. I’ve made them this way twice. They are so good I’m hesitant to mess with success by doing them the intended way.
Eric, I was so annoyed by my starter death that I spent a couple of days periodically thinking about alernative ways that I could use to get better control of the process.
I didn’t want to spend too much on buying another single-use gadget to use in the kitchen and my wife didn’t want me to build anything that involved electricity and heat in a box.
I was looking at all kinds of things on the web. I even considered a small pet heater (for gerbils). After a couple of days, I literally dreamed about the solution. Sous Vide! I know what you might be thinking. The same thing as my wife: WTF, are you nuts?
Sous Vide is a French innovation wherein preseason food (meats and veggies) is placed in a pouch which then goes into an immersion bath that’s set for a precise temperature and time. I’ve wanted to try it for several years but the immersion heaters were over $300. Then I searched Amazon and discovered many are now under $100!
My use-case is to place starter or mixed dough in a bowl and float it on the immersion water. In winter, our kitchen is quite cold but the heater works great and maintains the temperature within 1° Fahrenheit.
I just finished reviving and growing a new packet of Breadtopia live starter using the Sous Vide immersion heater. I had results that look almost exactly like the ones in your video.
For summer baking, I’ll move the setup into our basement which could double as a root cellar!
Sorry about the long post, but many thanks to you and the Brreadtopia gang for great products and service!!!
