stupid improvised sourdough shortcut
Hi! So I've ticked urgent although it's not necessarily urgent, I have about 10 hours before my dough begins to go sour and I should bake - but I'd like to figure this out before then if possible! I mixed up a recipe of Lady and Pups' "Fraudulent Easy Sourdough", which uses yogurt in place of starter and water. Followed recipe to the gram but I did sub in active dry instead of instant yeast ... I don't think that's the problem. I got a little ambitious, as per usual when baking, and grated some roasted red beets into the dough before the first rise.
Well, the dough didn't rise. I'm thinking it might the high sugar content of the beets which has slowed the rising process to a glacial pace, or maybe the added moisture??? It's not like the dough is rising slowly, it's not rising at all, at least from what I can see. It's been about 5 hours. Any ideas as to what's going on here? And how long should I wait before scrapping the whole thing and starting new?? I feel a fool! Help!
2 Comments
Yeast love sugar to a pretty high concentration (this is why sweet doughs rise so quickly and reliably) and moisture as well, so I doubt your beets added enough of either to be a problem.
Or feel like one, but don't mind it.
It's all grist for the learning mill.
(I still remember a bunch of bread dough, when I was first learning to bake, dead to me, though I didn't know it. I thought it was salvageable, moved it all around the apartment, searching for an appropriately warm but protected place to encourage it to rise. Watched for hours, ever hopeful, until finally concluding I had killed the yeast with too-hot water or it was dead on arrival, one of the two. Bought fresh yeast and a thermometer, started over and on to glory...no dead bricks of dough any more.)
To your problem, not sure the cause.
Whatever it is, if there's life in the dough you can try to revive it by adding some instant dry yeast, kneading in and waiting to see if it responds.
Or proof some regular yeast, knead that back in and also wait.
Possibly, add some more flour in, to reduce the wetness.
And/or split the dough into 2 or more parts, apply remedies to each, wait and compare.
If none works, make a back-up plan, buy some bread, and you have a good story to tell your guests.
And oh, BTW, I developed one general rule, besides not killing my bread yeast and always using a thermometer:
"Make every recipe once as written before I introduce variations."
Good luck and please tell us how it turns out!