I don't know whether this is considered cross-posting or not, but I just
posted this in reply to a responder at the baking ng. But I want to post it
to this bread group to ask if a couple of other things could've gone wrong
to make the little hard lumps in my dough.
Partial posting to Baking ng:
"I had a bread-dough
failure. I thought I'd take a shortcut and not cut the pate fermentee into
10 pieces because the kitchenaid does such a thorough job of mixing. But to
my dismay the dough when kneaded had multitudes of pieces of
hard-flour/dough throughout. I thought I'd try to save it and knead it
awhile because the dough wasn't up to the 77 degrees, so I decided to use
my Silipat ... "
Reinhart's Recipe (p. 170 French Bread made with Pate Fermentee) I'm
thinking perhaps these lumps might have also been caused by me doing this:
1) I added 1 teaspoon King Arthur
www.kingarthurflour.com Item 3413:
diastatic malt powder to the flours and pate fermentee because on p. 170 he
says "If your flour is organic and does not contain barley flour, you should
add 1 teaspoon of diastic barley malt powder to the flour blend." My flour
was King Arthur, and I'm pretty sure it is NOT organic, but I decided to add
it anyway. However, what I added was not "diastatic barley malt powder" as
written on Reinhart's recipe, but diastatic malt powder. Are they one and
the same? Is all malt, barley? Would this 1 teaspoon cause so many little
hardclumps/lumps of flour?
2) He says: "Add the water, stirring until everything comes together." - I
added all at once.
3) The other day when I made this recipe, the dough was too dry, using the 6
ounces of water, and it was the same today, so I measured out another 1
ounce, but added only a partial amount, but each time I added it, it may a
slurry around the mixer bowl.
4) The above reason, that I did not cut up the pate fermentee into 10 pieces
before mixing, could this have caused the lumps.
Pick and choose:
I can't think of anything else that might have caused these lumps, but I
recall I've seen them in my bread dough before and the bread had little
white dry spots after it had been baked. Not a real pretty sight, but
edible; I would rather not have them.
Any help welcome,
Thanks so much,
Dee