engv9q2ghqa wrote:
> "Barry Harmon" > wrote in message
> 6.158...
>> Dick Margulis > wrote in
>> :
>>
>>> engv9q2ghqa wrote:
>>>> "Dick Margulis" > wrote in message
>>>> ...
>> ************************************************** ******
>> Dick,
>>
>> Could this dough have risen too long? The salt would have extended
>> rise, but he doesn't have any salt. I frequently let my doughs go 45
>> minutes with nornal salt and get good rise, oven spring, etc. I also
>> don't go much over 2 hours for a normal bread in fermentation.
>>
>> It strikes me that the dough could be exhausted. A first rise of 2 1/2
>> hours follored by a one hour final rise could be enough to kill the
>> dough, espeically with no salt.
>>
>> Barry
>>
>
> What is exhausted dough? Does exhaustion have to do with the gluten or the
> yeast? The dough was rising well in the pan. I cut down on the amount of
> yeast in the recipe because it was going very fast without salt.
>
>
> Thanks
>
>

Exhaustion has to do with fermentation products. The yeast dies in its
own waste, essentially. Salt tightens gluten and helps give structure to
the dough. Without it, you have weaker gluten at the same time you have
faster yeast metabolism. That's what I meant when I said you're working
against nature.

When I worked in a commercial bakery, we made a salt-free whole wheat
bread _occasionally_ (it was a product that went in the freezer and was
only made again when there was none left--we couldn't sell it fast
enough to offer it as fresh baked goods). It was always problematic--it
tended to be poorly colored (pale gray rather than warm brown), poorly
textured (uneven crumb, more open than we wanted it), and poorly shaped
(rough top, swaybacked, and mushroomed over the pan walls). Sometimes a
batch would collapse and we'd throw it out. We were not happy bakers
when we saw salt-free bread on the order sheet. We used all the tricks
I'm trying to tell you about, but it was still an iffy proposition every
time.