Osmotolerant yeast for high sugar doughs

Hooray, osmotolerant yeast available in the UK from bakerybits.co.uk.  Time to start experimenting with sweet yeast breads again.

crunchy nutty cinnamon tear-and-share bread

It is cold and windy and yet again the river is in flood.  I wanted the warm comfort of a sweet spicy bread.  I have been continuing to keep a bowl of yeast dough/batter in the fridge, using it most days for a pizza or foccaccia.  This evening I took a good dollop (about three heaped tablespoons) of the batter, stirred in a teaspoon of mixed spice, four teaspoons of sugar, and a small handful of cranberries.  I would have used raisins but don't have any in stock. I spread this on the non-stick pan, and then sprinkled the top with lightly crushed pecans, a couple of teaspoons of sugar crystals and a sprinkling of spice. I put a little butter in small pieces on the top - use plenty if you are ok with dairy and want it richer.

I put this to sit in the oven with a pan of boiling water in the base for half an hour.  The steam gives a warm moist environment and speeds up rising  I then set the oven at 175C and the timer for 22 minutes.  I left the dough in the oven so that it continued to rise as the oven got hot.

This bread is soft, light, sweet and very easy to eat.  It can be spread with butter or eaten plain.  As it has very little fat you don't get sticky/greasy fingers eating it, which is a bonus for those of us that like to take a little bit every few minutes.

The dough is 500g flour (40%urid, 40% tapioca, 20% cornmeal),
20g Solanic potato protein 301 (this makes the dough light and stops slumping).  The potato protein is not necessary for low-rise breads; it is very helpful if you are making a full size loaf or using a breadmaker.
about 700ml water
2tsp dried yeast
pinch sugar.

Mix yeast, sugar and lukewarm water, leave to get a little frothy so you know the yeast is live.  Stir the flour into the water and leave to rise.  Cover and keep in the fridge to use for up to a week as needed.

gf bread without tapioca - first tests

I started testing bread recipes using a flour mix that has no tapioca in.  For a long time I have used a standard flour mix with urid lentils, tapioca and cornmeal that gives very good results.  However, my step-daughter seems to be unable to tolerate the tapioca, and I know that some people do find this flour difficult.

What with my travels, catching up on normal life and then wrenching my foot badly my planned experiments took a back seat.  However, I tried a plain loaf and a fruited loaf the other day using one third each of the urid lentil flour, brown rice flour (which I just bought from the supermarket so do not know what kind of rice) and yellow cornmeal.  To 600g of this mix I added 1.5 tsp yeast, a tbsp of agave syrup and sufficient water to make a batter ( I think about 800ml).  I also included 30g of potato protein, which helps gf breads not slump, but this is not yet available to domestic consumers.  In the past I found that provided I kept breads below 5cm/2inches and didn't let them rise above the tin they were fine without this.

I poured the batter into the tins, left them to rise in a warm moist oven, and when they nearly reached the top of the tin put the oven on.  The loaves were baked for 50 minutes at 175C, the little rolls baked in muffin tins were baked for 25 minutes.  Remember that this includes the time taken for the oven to get hot.  I find that it is better to leave a gf loaf for longer than you think necessary rather than have an inadequately cooked middle, so if you don't feel sure the bread is done take it out of the tin and put back in the oven for a few more minutes.

The plain loaf did slump a little but does not have a layer of gluey dough.  It is ok to eat plain - just a bit more crumbly than my usual loaf.  I made good croutons with some diced bread, a squirt of oil and some garlic, baked until crisp.  Any left over bread can be turned into breadcrumbs and kept into the freezer until you want to crisply coat something.  Two days later it is still easy to slice without crumbling.

The second loaf and the buns were made from the same batter but with added ingredients.  As this was a first test, and my foot still wouldn't bear my weight, the recipe was an informal and unrecorded handful of this and that.  I added more sugar, some vanilla, a bit of cocoa, about a cupful of chopped dried apricots I had cooked with water to go with breakfast pancakes, some dried blueberries and cranberries.  I also added a tablespoon of oil.  This mixture made a smooth loaf with good  holding qualities.  Two days later it still slices well and is moist without being cloying.  It is sufficiently good that I will work up a proper recipe.

The basic loaf needs a bit more work, but it is promising.  I found that tapioca gave a smooth chewiness to baked goods, whereas rice tended to give a gritty texture.   I always disliked Doves Farm flour for anything other than pancakes and choux pastry because things fell apart and had a lousy rough texture, and thought it was due to the rice.

I am hoping to create a bread mix as tasty and well-behaved as my usual lazy seedy bread. I think next time I will add buckwheat for the additional flavour a well as seeds.

Lazy bread in the campervan

Before we left England on our European jaunt I mixed up some flours, seeds and yeast (and some Solanic potato protein which helps stop slumping) and made up 400g bags and heat sealed them.  Monday evening I added water to make a thick slurry and left the dough to sit overnight.  

I had no idea if the yeast I had used could cope with being treated this way, but next morning, even in the van which we hadn’t heated, the batter was bubbly so I put it in a bread tin and put it in the oven.  

I have found in the past that this bread copes with being baked from a start in a cold oven, so I just did that here, cooking at full heat for an hour and 15 minutes at a slightly reduced temperature.  I haven’t got a thermometer so I have no idea what temperature the bread was cooked at.  However, the bread came out well cooked and delicious, so I can very definitely say that it works well as a lazy, no idea what the temperature is, campervan bread.

This bread is made with urid lentil, tapioca, and cornmeal flours plus potato protein, pumpkin, sunflower and linseeds, yeast and water.

quick gf seedy bagels

I've just made my first batch of bagels in the new flat.  Making things quicker  is important as there is less room to leave things to rise slowly, and in smaller quantities as there isn't the space in the freezer.  Making yeast breads without the long slow fermentation may reduce the availability of nutrients and increase tendencies to indigestion if you have problems, but for most people this is unlikely to be a problem.

Vary the nuts/seeds mixture as you like.

1tsp yeast
1 tsp sugar
400 ml water
250g flour (my gf mix of 40%urid, 40%tapioca, 20%cornmeal) plus extra to get to right texture.
70g buckwheat
20g sesame seeds
50g almond (ground or whole and blitz with other seeds)
1 egg (optional)
1/4 tsp vanilla
1 tsp maple syrup (or other sugar)

Mix yeast into lukewarm water with the first tsp of sugar.  Mix the flour into this yeasty water.
Blitz the buckwheat, nuts and seeds to a fine texture unless you want whole seedy texture to your bagel.
Mix this into the dough, stir in egg and vanilla and syrup.

Leave to sit for fifteen minutes to allow flours to absorb moisture.

Add extra flour until you get a dough you can handle with floured hands to shape into rings.

Shape into rings and place on a floured tray.  Cover lightly with cling/plastic wrap.  Place in an oven with some hot water and leave the light on - this gives a warm steamy environment to help the rise.  Otherwise, anywhere out of the way where they won't get disturbed will do.  If it is cool the rise will take longer.

When the rings have increased in size prepare a large pan of boiling water.  Slip the bagels into the water carefully and cook for a couple of minutes on each side.  I tested a range of cooking times in the past and decided that being accurate on timings doesn't make much difference.

Drain on a cooling rack,

Sprinkle seeds on top while still wet if wanted.

Place on baking sheets - I use reusable baking liners to make sure nothing sticks.

Bake at 170C for about twenty minutes.  If your oven is uneven and some get brown before others turn the trays around.

Cool.  If not using in the next couple of days wrap and freeze.

Butternut squash and raisin spice gf bread

I had some roasted butternut squash left over from supper last night.  Some went into a lasagna with left-over chilli, and the rest I mashed and based a sweet spicy bread around.  This bread is a warm tawny colour, slightly sweet, slightly spicy, soft in the middle and crisp on the outside.  An excellent snack with a cup of tea, buttered if that is how you like it.  It would be good with honey if you like a sweeter bread.


200g gf flour (40% urid, 40% tapioca, 20% cornmeal)
200ml water
1 tsp yeast
75g roasted butternut squash, mashed
50g raisins
25g demerera sugar
1 tsp mixed spice
1 tsp oil

Mix all the ingredients together to a sloppy, lumpy batter.  If you use the kind of yeast that needs to be started in water then remember to prepare that first.

Place in breadmaker and set on basic loaf.  My Panasonic has 01 as the basic setting, and I chose large loaf and medium crust to ensure it had long enough.

In a normal oven I recommend a one pound loaf tin, 170C and about 40 minutes. Place in greased tin and leave to rise in a warm moist environment for an hour or two.  You should be able to tell it has increased in bulk a bit but it won't have doubled in size.

Leave to cool on a wire rack before slicing (though it sliced ok and tasted great when still warm).

Baking experiments - gf bread in a Panasonic bread machine - Phase 3: large white

Learning how the machine handles seedy bread and that with buckwheat. This time I decided to find out what the plain flour, water and yeast mixture produces - a 'white' bread

side view of loaf

Ingredients
500g flour (40% urid, 40% tapioca, 20% cornmeal)
625 ml water
3 tsp yeast (I have been using a lot more yeast than usual due to short rising time)
1 tbs agave syrup
1/4 tsp vanilla
1 tsp oil

Mix together in a bowl and pour into bread tin.  Set the Panasonic Bread maker on Setting 1 and tell machine it is an extra large loaf with a dark crust.  Lets see what will happen!

Well, what happened is that the batter rose a lot and collapsed when cooking.  Not a surprise really given how wet the mixture was.  If I was baking such a wet mix with so much yeast by hand I would have let it rise about a third more than the initial batter volume and then baked.  This turned out about 2.5 times as tall on the edges as the initial batter.  The batter was 5cm deep in the tin and the loaf is 12cm high at its tallest point.

collapsed top

However, despite the central collapse and the large hole left by the blade, the texture was even.  It hadn't produced the claggy bottom of the previous version, perhaps due to the different setting - but I don't know what difference telling the machine to do an extra large crust with a dark crust does.  There didn't seem to be any difference in the cooking time and there is no read out of the temperature.  I might ask Panasonic what these controls do to the cooking programme.

soft light slice

The bread is very soft and light - quite astonishingly so.  The slight rolling of the dough seen on the slice is probably due to my impatience - the bread was still slightly warm when I sliced it.  I find waiting for bread to cool in order to find out how it worked is the hardest part of baking.

note high sides and blade hole.  Shown next to bread 2

The initial cut through the middle of the loaf shows the dip in the middle and the hole left by the blade.  This may have been exacerbated by cutting before it was completely cold.

The bread toasted well the next morning though I couldn't cut it neatly.  The very light texture and the hole from the blade made this difficult.  As the bread is more moist than wheat bread the blade of the bread knife also tends to stick.

The trick is to manipulated the quantities of ingredients to get maximum lift with minimum risk of collapse.  I have some potato protein I have been sent to test as an aid for gluten free baking, so I think I will replicate this collapsed loaf with some of that to compare.

Doughnuts - gluten free

fluffy inside, gluten-free doughnuts

More on the adventures with a deep fat fryer.  I kept getting emails saying it was international doughnut week or some such daft thing.  So, I made four types of doughnuts in one day.  Flour is my standard mix of urid lentil (40%), tapioica (40%) and fine cornmeal (20%)

While I was looking at a lot of doughnut recipes I came across some that used baking powder (referred to as ‘cake’ doughnuts by some), and those using yeast.  I also came across some that used both.  This seemed a strange idea, as I tend to think of baking powder releasing its leavening effect as soon as it gets wet.  If you read the excellent Alton Brown, who provides good information in a simple way about basic cooking chemistry, baking powder now has a two stage process where it reacts when wet but also when heated, so you get lift in the oven or hot fat even if you have a gap between mixing and cooking. 

I tried two doughnut recipes using baking powder, both with sweet potato, then one with yeast.  I then took a yeasted recipe, and made it first with yeast by itself and then with added baking powder. To my surprise, in a blind testing, it was very obvious which doughnuts had the baking powder.  They were softer, more squeezable, and had a better mouth feel. You can see a more open texture.

on left - yeast only, right, yeast and baking powder

If you can’t use yeast, it is still worth making doughnuts with baking powder, but they seem to stale a bit quicker.  If you can’t eat baking powder, make yeast doughnuts.  If you can, use both together. 

I will be using this as my standard recipe.  I will try substituting vegetable oil for the butter, and leaving out the yogurt, so as to reduce the lactose, but I don’t expect it will make much difference as the amount is so tiny.  The yogurt adds acidity, which, according to Alton Brown, gives a higher temperature at which the batter sets. A squeeze of lemon would do this too.  He was discussing variations on cookies, so I don’t know if this will make a difference in the deep fryer.

Doughnuts – yeast

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/5268/cinnamon-doughnuts

1 egg yolk

1 tsp yeast

100ml water

30g caster sugar

120 flour

1 tsp yogurt

8g butter, melted and cooled

Doughnuts – yeast and baking powder

1 egg yolk

1 tsp yeast

1/2 tsp baking powder

100ml water

30g caster sugar

120 flour

1 tsp yogurt

8g butter, melted and cooled

*remember to use water that isn't too chlorinated - filtered or water left out to sit for a while is fine if you are in a high chlorine area.


Set fryer to 140C about ten minutes (I timed my machine, it got to 180C in six minutes)  before your doughnuts have finished their second rise.

Method
Dry ingredients
If you have yeast that goes straight into flour, whisk this into the flour with the baking powder
If your yeast needs starting in warm water, mix the yeast, half a teaspoon of the sugar and a little flour into warm (no more that 38C) water and leave to start frothing.

Wet ingredients
Mix water, egg, yogurt, melted butter and sugar together.

Mix wet and dry ingredients together.  It will be wetter than you would expect for a traditional yeast dough.  If you touch it lightly you should get a little dough sticking to your fingers.  It will get dryer as it sits as the flour absorbs moisture slowly.

Leave to rise.  If possible put in a warm moist environment.  I usually rise doughs in the oven with the light on and put a bowl of boiling water in the bottom at the start.  You will see the dough rise, but if you can't remember how big it was to start with, scoop a little out and you will see lots of bubbles in the batter.

bubbles visible in risen dough

Take small handfuls of the dough and shape into a ring by pushing your thumb through the middle.  This saves you trying to roll and cut the dough, or having to pinch ends together if you start by making a sausage and joining.  I use the same technique as when I make bagels.  With gentle handling this soft dough is quite easy to work.

Place on a floured tray and let it rise for a while, until you can see that they have grown in size.  Place in hot fat until browned, turn over and cook second side.  Shake the basket gently when you first put them in to make sure they don't stick to the basket. Drain on a cooling rack.  Roll in sugar while warm, or ice when cold.

frying doughnuts

yeast only (left) yeast and BP (right)

 TT, who occasionally buys doughnuts at train stations said these were better than the ones available from these chains.  I suspect if you served them to people they would just be amazed that you had made doughnuts and not even think that they were made from unusual and gluten free flours.

I didn't have a proper attempt at filling them with jam - I think a syringe would be helpful for this, making the dough easier to handle.  However, I also have a plan to try freezing neat blobs of jam which could then be pushed easily into the dough, thawing as the doughnut cooked. If I get around to that I'll let you know the results.

iced doughnut

Italian meringue as an ingredient in gluten-free yeast doughs

It's the time of year where people write about all the lovely Panettone they make - a light sweet yeast bread that tears easily between the teeth.  I made one once following an immensely complicated recipe supplied by some official Italian organisation - my recollection was that it took days.


Now, of course, the idea of a light, flexible yeast dough seems very nearly unobtainable.  I am working on a cinnamon bun recipe (did you know Oct 4th is Cinnamon Bun day in Sweden? http://valariebudayr.typepad.com/learnsweden/2008/10/cinnamon-bun-da.html ) and striving for softness and flexibility.  Holding together is easy, taste is easy, texture is difficult.


I took to wondering what Italian Meringue would be like as an ingredient in a yeast dough. For those of you that aren't sure what an Italian meringue is, you make it by making a sugar syrup - 115C, medium ball stage, and pouring it onto whipped egg while it is hot and then leaving the mixer running while the mixture cools down.  I tried this version as I thought that the meringue would be more robust in the mix than simply adding whipped egg white.  The other possible advantage to using meringue as an ingredient half way through making a dough as it would give the yeast time to work without too much sugar around - I am still trying to find a UK supplier of domestic quantities of osmotolerant yeast.


I spent quite a while hunting on the Internet for any information on this and couldn't find anything.  I ran a quick test.  Here are the results.  For anyone who doesn't want to read the rest of the blog, I have to say that it isn't worth it -  adding meringue to a yeast dough before baking does change the texture but not in any particularly useful way.


I made a yeast dough with:
150g flour (40%urid, 40%tapioca, 40%cornmeal)
1 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp yeast
20g butter
1 egg
c60ml water to get sloppy dough


While the dough was rising I made the meringue.  You can see from the bubbles in the dough that the yeast was working.  this is a more reliable indicator with my gf doughs than bulk in the early stages.

dough - yeast bubbles

I made a meringue with two egg whites so that I would have enough bulk for the stand mixer to work.  This was 80g.  The sugar syrup was made from 300gm sugar, 25g glucose and 65ml water.  This is enough for a four egg white meringue, but I made a double mixture as my heavy bottomed pan was too large for a half mix.  The spare can be caramelised and made into nut brittle.


Mix the water and sugar and glucose together before applying any heat.  Ideally leave the whole mix to rest for a while to ensure that all the sugar is wet - if you stir once you add heat you will get a granulated mess as I did with my first (half size) batch.  The glucose helps to avoid the crystallisation.  Once you get past the soft ball stage ( a drop of the syrup in cold water forms a ball you can roll between your fingers rather than simply dispersing) whip the egg as in normal meringue.  Then pour the hot syrup in a steady stream into the egg white while the mixer is working, and keep mixing until the meringue is cold.  You will have a lovely glossy meringue that can be used for making Italian ice-creams amongst other things.

meringue

At this point I divided the dough into three.  The first batch had 25g of the meringue added to 75g of dough.  This looked like equal amounts in volume.  The second had 10 g of meringue added.  The third was plain dough.  The remaining meringue was baked in the oven after the breads were complete.

dough and meringue

I made a bun shape and a flat disc from each of the doughs.  Ideally the sugar amount in each dough would  have been made up to the same levels to be sure that any changes in texture were due to the meringue not the ingredients, but I didn't do that.

meringue and dough mix

three doughs, baked - plain on left

The meringue did make a difference.  The one with the most meringue in reminded me of the texture of good rock buns - a slightly crisp, slightly cracking texture with adequate cohesion and large air bubbles.  The medium mix seemed promising as a sweet dough when fresh as it could be shaped when raw and had a good even crumb with medium sized air bubbles.  The plain dough was just a plain dough - firm, with irregular sized small bubbles.  

high-meringue mix

medium mix

plain dough

I didn't leave the mixtures to rise after shaping because I had foolishly started this whole process rather late in the evening.  I just put the buns into a cold oven and set it to 170C and cooked for about 22 minutes.

We tested them when they had just cooled and again in the morning.  They seemed more promising when fresh out of the oven, but had staled quickly and seemed a lot more boring twelve hours later.

 I baked the meringue that was left. I simply put the leftovers onto baking parchment, put in the oven at 170C for 5 minutes then turned the oven off and left it overnight.

The meringue was very good - slightly chewy and without that crisp disintegration into shards that normal meringue has.  Trying to think what I don't like about the usual meringue I make or buy Tolerant Taster and I said at the same moment - "they explode all over you". The chewiness was also quite slight, so it wasn't difficult to eat the way some meringues are that really stick to your teeth.  I would make this again.




So, the reason people don't use Italian meringue in yeast doughs is that it isn't worth it - but I am glad I took the time to find out.

Taralli Pugliesi and Bread Baking Babes

trying out Taralli Pugliesi with Bread Baking Babes - post a link to your efforts by Dec 29th.  Mine are rising in a warm moist oven at the moment so will post later.  Not sure anyone likes fennel flavoured breads so cut the fennel seed (home-grown) down by a fifth.  Always have the wild birds to scoff any failures.


http://www.luculliandelights.com/2010/12/bread-baking-babes-in-december-taralli.html

 --------------------

Taralli - bagel cooler shows how tiny they are

Taralli look like miniature bagels but are made with a lot of olive oil and baked until firm.  Mine have come out with a texture which Tolerant Taster describes as 'a firm doughnut'.  I think they will make an excellent food for dipping in humus or mustard, and I'll put them out before my New Years Day lunch when the hoards arrive and want to eat before the meal is ready.  They always do, while we wait for the last guests to arrive.




Ingredients:
500g flour  (40% urid lentil, 40% tapioca, 20% cornmeal)
100 ml extra-virgin olive oil
tepid water to get to soft but shapeable dough
5 g  fennel seeds
1/2 tsp yeast 
1/2  tsp sea salt
1 egg  (the recipe says use white wine if you don't want to use egg)



Large pan of boiling water for initial cooking, oven at 170C for baking.  
Slotted spoon, cooling racks, drip tray, baking trays.


Mix yeast with water or flour depending on type you have. I have the kind you have to mix with a little water rather than putting straight into the flour.
Mix oil and egg and yeasted water together,  
Mix dry ingredients. 
Mix the two together.  I used the food mixer and beat the dough, adding water as needed, until I got a smooth dough that held together and was easily shaped.  Don't make it any dryer than needed as it will rise easier if wetter.  

mixed dough - not sloppy, not dry

Leave the dough to rise for a while in a warm moist place.  When you are sure it has begun rising shape into little rings.

roll little snakes and press ends together

let them rise in a warm moist place.

I put doughs that are rising in the oven with some hot water to add steam.  I also spritz with water to keep the surfaces from drying out and slowing the rise.

When these little rings had risen a bit I put them in boiling water - the original recipe says put in a few at a time and take out when they rise to the surface.  I think this must be different with wheat flour, as these didn't really sink much, so I just boiled for about twenty seconds then drained on a rack.  When they had all been through the boiling water and drained I put them onto oiled baking sheets and baked at 170C for about twenty minutes.

bake in a medium oven

 When they are golden brown and firm put them on a rack to cool.

piles of mini fennel- flavoured bread rings.

The original blog suggests having these with a chili flavoured oil instead of fennel, plain or with rosemary.   I'll see how these age before I decide if they are to be a regular snack food and so worth trying with different flavours. At the moment they are very good, though I do admit I have never tried the original so don't know what I was aiming at.

Yeast for high-sugar doughs

I hadn't put much thought into how yeast works until this morning.  For many years I had sour-dough starters in the fridge, a San Francisco one and two Italian ones, which I used depending on the flavour of the bread I wanted. In my emergency planning - you know, the house catches fire, what do you take, I had thought the computer, my wallet and the yeasts would be what I rescued  Without realising it I had cut down immensely on the amount of gluten I ate, so only had one small slice of spelt sourdough a day at most, with the occasionally (as in once or twice a year) treat of a croissant or doughnut, and fruit crumbles made with spelt (a low gluten flour).

Now that all my waking hours are consumed with my curiosity about how none-glutened flours work I bake all the time.  Today I set out to make cinnamon buns, one of the few things I remember my mother cooking that were really delicious.  She was from Pennsylvania, and sticky spicy fruity rich yeast breads were part of her childhood.  As I grew up in India, and she had to do any baking in a metal box perched over a primus stove, and  had five kids to look after with no washing machine, it is a wonder she ever baked anything.

Whilst researching cinnamon bun recipes I came across a reference to 'osmotolerant' yeast.  This is yeast that can cope with the high amount of sugar in sweet doughs.  Apparently the sugar pulls the moisture away from the yeast, leaving it gasping for breath....well, that is how I see it.  It turns out that it is easy to buy a osmotolerant yeast that can cope with high sugar doughs if you live in the US, and the website even specifies that it is gluten free.

In the UK it is a bit harder.  I found a supplier that does 14kg blocks, but an email I sent to ask if they had samples bounced back as undeliverable - I had clicked on their 'contact me' button on their website.  With a bit more hunting I found another company that does sell yeasts for high sugar doughs, but the ingredients are not listed in such a way as to make it clear whether the produce is gluten free.  http://www.angelyeast.co.uk/1a-sugar-tolerant.html  If anyone know prehaps you could twll me.  An email to them hasn't bounced back, so that is a good start, but I expect it will be a while before I get an email back, seeing as it is Christmas Eve.  If I can get a sample I will do a comparison with my flours and let you know if it is worth the trouble.

At the moment I have a batch of dough, hopefully rising, based on this recipe: http://www.wildyeastblog.com/2008/10/13/cinnamon-sticky-buns/  I am trying it with a straight substitution of my own gluten free flour mix (urid, tapioca, cornmeal) and will tweak if necessary.

I am planning to develop a recipe for these sweet buns that you can store unbaked in the freezer and just bake whenever you want some.  That would make them ideal for leisurely breakfasts when you want something a bit special without any effort.