To freeze dough vs loaves AND how to reduce the yeasty flavor?

Thanks for the great recipe, Erin! I made these loaves this weekend and they turned out wonderfully. I used one to make egg in a hole (because they have great natural holes) and the other to make the MOST supreme of all French toasts!

I have two questions..
First, what do you think of the merits of freezing the laminated dough vs. freezing the baked loaves? I normally freeze dough, but I'm curious to hear your thoughts.

Secondly, I have one small issue with the final product.. I found the loaves to have a more pronounced yeasty/fermented flavor than I like in my croissants (having lived in France for many years, I've also eaten many croissants :P), and I've similarly remarked this of other croissants I've eaten in the US. I'll admit that I only had active dry yeast on hand, so increased the yeast in the recipe by 25% to account for this, though I did omit the long ferment and instead let rise at room temp before proceeding with the recipe. I have considered possibly adding a smidge more sugar (75 g instead of 66g), but I'm really wondering about how I could play with the amount of yeast. I'm curious – why does this recipe even have so much yeast? Though I bake almost exclusively with sourdough now, I would usually use roughly half that amount of yeast for this quantity of flour. Could I reduce the yeast in the recipe otherwise, and what kind of results should I expect?

Olivia Noel
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Croissant Loaf
Recipe question for: Croissant Loaf

1 Comment

BakerBren
BakerBren March 31, 2020
The recipe has so much yeast in it because of the high sugar content. Sugar fights for water, and deprives the yeast of what it needs, so it's common to add more standard yeast to compensate. At the professional level, special osmo-tolerant yeasts are used. If you can find any SAF Gold or similar osmo-tolerant yeast, you can reduce your quantity used. Adding more sugar to your dough would only make the problem worse instead of better. You could instead try reducing both sugar and yeast at the same time.

Regarding the freezing question: Personally, I'd prefer baking the loaves then either slicing and freezing for toasting later, or freezing the whole loaves to freshen up in a hot oven before slicing and using all up at once. You could probably get away with freezing the dough for a short time, but the yeast activity and possible structure will be impacted over time.
 
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