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Whole Grain Sourdough Bread: Long vs. Short Autolysis
Background
[Jump to follow-up experiment]
Many whole grain bakers agree that the autolyse, a flour and water pre-mix stage, is crucial to a successful loaf of “hundo” or hundred percent whole grain sourdough bread. The water hydrates and softens the bran, which allows for better gluten development and eventual airiness of the crumb, and lengthening the entire process through the autolyse is seen as flavor-improving. I haven’t been able to find why flavor improvement is supposed to happen through autolysis, though this idea is repeated throughout the baking world.
Experiment
I tested two different approaches to autolysing home-Mockmilled whole grain dough: a long and cold (refrigerator 38F) autolyse versus a short and warm (winter house temps 69F) autolyse.
Results
The cold-long autolyse bread was less open in structure and crumb texture was not as good. Testers (my family and one other family) described the cold autolyse bread as grittier and the warm autolyse bread as chewier.
Flavor judgment, however, was ultimately a question of preference. Some people like tangier bread; some like more wheat/bran flavors coming through. Testers agreed that the cold-long autolyse had more wheat character and the warm-short autolyse was more tangy.
Vocabulary for taste testing was a challenge, and my favorite piece of feedback, about the cold-long autolyse bread was, “This bread is breadier.”
Methods
Refrigerate 9 hours
Leave at room temperature 1 hour 15 minutes
Placed in lit oven 1 hour
Dough temp 68F
Dough temp 67F
*I tried somewhat in vain to extend the starter build by cooling it in the refrigerator after feeding, and then placing it next to a cold window overnight.
**My intention was to proof overnight, but the dough expanded a lot in the first few hours in the refrigerator.
Videos of Coil Folding and Laminating
Explanations and Theories
The results of this experiment indicate that it’s possible to soften bran in a whole grain dough in a little over an hour at room temperature, and that the apparent gluten-building benefits of a longer autolyse (better windowpane before adding starter and salt) are not carried forward through to the final bread. These conclusions, however, need to be tempered with several caveats.
Going Forward
Informally, my overarching conclusion remains that bakers can play with several key variables to arrive at tasty and moderately open crumb loaves of bread: time, temperature, inoculation, and active gluten development (slap and fold, rubaud mixing, stand mixing, coil folding, stretching and folding, lamination).
For example: a strategy of more time, low temperature, average inoculation, and minimal gluten interventions can result in a similar bread to a strategy of less time, warm temperature, large inoculation, and extensive gluten development interventions.
What is interesting to me about this experiment is that the long autolyse allowed “time” to not interact with inoculation/fermentation. Structure was being built before the leaven was added. Yet, my results didn’t show this as being beneficial.
Again, this was one iteration of an experiment with two particular wheats and my particular baker’s hands.
I hope others will try this experiment or similar ones and report on their findings. To this point, @woodward7053 on Instagram repeated this experiment with a 90:10 mix of a home-milled strong red (Rouge de Bordeaux) and rye, at a higher hydration. He had better bloom and height with the warm-short autolyse but couldn’t make definitive conclusions because during the final proof, the warm-short dough got warmer, possibly due to position in the proofer. He also had a long retarded bulk fermentation, supporting the theory that fermentation time might erase benefits of a long autolyse.
Whole Grain Sourdough Bread: Long vs. Short Autolysis
Ingredients
Instructions
Shopping List
Follow-up Experiment: No Autolyse vs. 3-hour Autolyse
In this experiment, I tested no autolyse vs. 3-hour autolyse at room temperature and again in whole grain dough and something surprising happened during the experiment. The 3-hour autolyse dough fermented a little faster than the no autolyse dough, despite starting out a couple of degrees cooler.
No autolyse on the left; 3-hour autolyse on right
I stopped the bulk fermentation at the same time, so the final experiment is imperfect: it tested no autolyse vs 3-hour autolyse, and greater and lesser degree of bulk fermentation. Nonetheless, I decided it was worth reporting on what occurred and the results.
Very similar outcomes
First I’ll explain why the autolysed dough was cooler: I milled wheat berries just before making each dough. This meant that by the time I added starter to the 3-hour autolysed dough, it had cooled to room temperature, about 67F. Meanwhile, the no autolyse dough was in the mid-70s when I added the starter due to the warmth of the recently milled flour.
After I realized this discrepancy, I tried to cool the no autolyse dough. I refrigerated it in 10-minute increments, testing the temp and folding it to redistribute the heat, until I brought it down to 69F (20 minutes total, not quite 67F). At this point I had to leave my house for 40 minutes, and abandon the doughs and the idea of a perfect experiment. It’s worth noting, though, that any time I folded the warmer dough, I also folded the colder one so they would get the same gluten development. (Later, I laminated them both and did a couple of coil folds.)
Baker’s Percentage
78% whole grain turkey red wheat flour
22% whole grain hard white wheat flour
90% water
2% salt
18% starter
In trying to understand why the no autolyse dough lagged in fermentation vigor behind the 3-hour autolyse dough despite being warmer, I looked to research on why people autolyse to begin with. Alongside claims of better flavor and handling, autolysing starts the process of amylase enzymes in flour turning the flour’s starch into more consumable sugars. I believe that is what boosted the fermentation speed of the 3-hour autolyse dough. I also speculate that perhaps some spontaneous fermentation was starting to happen in the autolysing dough.
As you can see in the photos below, the final breads were close to identical. There was slightly more oven spring in the no-autolyse less fermented dough and it was easier to shape, both aspects likely attributable to its lesser degree of fermentation. I didn’t see any benefit to the crumb, color and aroma in the 3-hour autolysed more fermented dough, but this isn’t particularly meaningful given that fermentation differences might have canceled out autolyse differences.
My takeaway from this experiment is that autolysing may speed the fermentation of a dough, and this is useful information when trying to estimate timing for sourdough baking. Also, I have yet to detect different aroma and flavor from autolysing.
Whole Grain Sourdough Bread: Long vs. Short Autolysis