First of all, of course, I wish everyone a Happy New Year!
I will boast at the same time. I love old glass Christmas tree decorations from childhood. Look what little things they gave me: Mir satellites, cool, albeit clouded, faded from time to time.

And now to the challah.
Maggie Gleser's recipe, I met him at Luda's, mariana_aga , for which many thanks to her.
Recently I have been baking this challah 3 times a week. I ferment the dough (bezoparnoe) in the refrigerator. And, I tell you, the bread comes out not just excellent, it comes out just delicious, the most delicate crumb, the softest, lightest. The aroma is impossible to convey. The taste is great, it keeps just very, very well.

It is very convenient that there is a fairly large time lag in working with such a dough (mine spends in the refrigerator from 7 to 10 hours, depending on when I knead and when I wake up), fermented, it can also be kneaded and stored for up to a day in the fridge.

I have read and tried different ways to knead the fermentation dough in the refrigerator and warm it up afterwards.
Here is an article by Luda about such a dough. Hot water during kneading, fermentation at 0-8C for 8-10 hours until complete exit without kneading, warming the dough to 30C after the refrigerator.

I read Reinhardt's "Artisan Breads ..." (I haven't read everything yet, only the introductory part and the first few recipes :)). Quite moist dough, weak kneading (water for kneading 35C, and it recommends soaking even instant yeast in warm water, not only active and pressed), 4 folds at room temperature with an interval of 10 minutes. (i.e., in the process of gluten development, the dough ferments for 40 minutes before the refrigerator at room temperature), fermentation in the refrigerator overnight (up to 4 days), cutting and forming the dough without heating.

At Sua. Improved mix (i.e. kneading, which shortens the kneading time at 2nd speed in order to reduce the oxidation of the dough and prevent the destruction of carotenoids, kneading until the gluten is not fully developed. After such kneading, the fermentation time is lengthened (compared to the dough after intensive kneading until gluten, which does not require and does not withstand long fermentation), which leads to a greater accumulation of acid in the dough, a crumb of a more beautiful color, creamy, improves aroma, taste, shelf life of products. Hamelman writes about the additional development of gluten in the process of fermentation and kneading), the temperature of the dough is 22C (that is, it is not hot and not warm water during kneading, unless, of course, the flour is ice-cold), fermentation at 6C for 15-20 hours, cutting, rounding, rest-warming of the blanks for 20 minutes. Final shaping, proofing for 1-1.5 hours, baking.

I will be talking about this particular recipe for my particular refrigerator. I knead the dough from 2.7 kg. flour, this is about 4.3 kg. test. I did not like the kneading in hot and warm water, the dough was overheating with all the consequences. Warming up to 30C after the refrigerator led to fermentation of the dough. If I left the dough to grow to its maximum without kneading in the refrigerator, the products were smaller than with kneading. And I had to cut the yeast a little, otherwise the dough would ferment.

So, I knead the dough in water from the tap for literally 4 minutes. until uniform. Let stand for 30 minutes. During this time, yeast (I use instant), I think, comes to life and the gluten swells. I knead for 6 minutes. at maximum speed until medium gluten develops. There is a lot of dough, the consistency is average, it does not turn very much there even at maximum speed, you have to constantly push it off the hook with a scraper. Less dough will take less time. I'm sending it to the refrigerator. An hour later and again an hour later I fold. I leave it alone until morning. In the morning I divide, round, let sit for 20-30 minutes. Forming, proofing, baking. Something like this.

Recipe (I bring to one 700-gram loaf), I bake four of these in the L6 forms and four 350-gram in the L11 forms.

450 g flour c. from. (I have been taking Kursk lately, it is very good)
1.5 g dry instant SAF gold yeast
6.6 g salt
9.7 g sugar
66 g vegetable oil
216 g of water (or a little more until a dough of medium consistency is obtained).

I wrote about the batch. About molding. Challah is molded. I scour a braid from 3 plaits. I roll the rounded pieces of dough with a rolling pin into oval cakes, roll them into bundles, then immediately roll them out a little in length, so that they are about a third longer than the shape. After a short rest (while I roll out the last one, the first one has already rested), I weave a braid, put it in a greased form. Proof for about 1.5 - 2 hours, until slightly above the edges of the mold. I grease with a mixture of eggs and a couple of st. l. water with a pinch of salt. Sprinkle with sesame seeds. I bake at 190-195С small 40 minutes, large 50 minutes.

This is from small forms, L11

Intensive "cold" technology provides for one-phase dough preparation without a fermentation stage, intensive kneading (or enhanced mechanical processing of the dough during kneading), a reduced dough temperature of 24-27 ° C, the use of baker's pressed yeast with increased maltase activity in the amount of 3.5-4, 0% to the flour mass, the use of complex improvers, the introduction of sugar and fat in an amount up to 4% to the flour mass, carrying out the stage of preliminary and final proofing.

With intensive "cold" technology, there is no stage of dough fermentation in the mass. Ripening of the dough takes place in the formed dough piece during the final proofing.

When kneading the dough, the raw materials are introduced in a certain sequence: water, pressed yeast, salt, sugar, flour, baking improver. When using dried instant yeast, it is evenly scattered over the surface of the flour. Fatty products are added after 2-3 minutes of kneading. The use of yeast with high maltase activity leads to an increase in gas formation in the dough and an increase in its gas-holding capacity.

The required dough temperature of 24-28 ° C is set by using a certain temperature when mixing water. The dough is kneaded in an intensive kneading machine or in a conventional batch machine, but with an increase in the kneading time to 15-18 minutes. After kneading, the dough is left to rest ("rest") in the container of the kneading machine (dezhe) at room temperature for 20-40 minutes.

After maturing, the dough is divided into blanks of the required mass, rounded and left for 10-20 minutes at room temperature on a cutting table or in a preliminary proofing cabinet. The implementation of the stage of preliminary proofing at a relative humidity of the vapor-air environment of 75% and a temperature of 36 ° C for 20 minutes allows to reduce the duration of the final proofing, to improve the rheological properties of the dough pieces.

After preliminary proofing, the dough pieces are shaped according to the characteristics of a specific product and sent to the final proofing cabinet. Optimal proofing conditions are 35-40 ° С, relative air humidity 75-85%. The duration of the final proofing when preparing the dough using intensive technology increases by 30-50% compared to other methods and can be 60-90 minutes.

The use of intensive technology reduces the overall duration of the bakery products production process by 3-3.5 times compared to the sponge method. Reducing the duration of dough preparation is achieved due to the intensification of microbiological, colloidal and biochemical processes occurring during the maturation of the dough

Everyone knows how to knead the dough. This process includes several steps familiar to anyone who has ever baked bread, pizza, or sweet pastries. With slight variations, the history of yeast dough always follows the same scenario.

How to make bread and pizza dough?

• Dough kneading... Flour, water, yeast and other additives are mixed and begin to knead - crush, beat, and generally subject to all kinds of violence, as a result of which gluten or gluten develops in the dough, something like a protein web that holds the dough together.
• First climb... The dough is covered and left alone, allowing the yeast to work. Fermentation is in progress - the yeast begins to multiply, eating the sugars in the dough and producing alcohol and carbon dioxide, which forms small bubbles inside the dough. In addition, enzymes work alongside the yeast to strengthen the gluten bonds.

• Second climb... The dough is crushed in order to knock out carbon dioxide from it, give it the shape of the future product, and let it rise again. During the forming process, the yeast is redistributed within the dough, gaining access to new deposits of food, and the dough rises again - this time more evenly. As with the first climb, gluten bonds also improve during the second.
• Bakery products... The future bread or pizza is put into the oven. In the first seconds, the bubbles inside the dough begin to increase sharply under the influence of heat, the gluten "web" stretches to its maximum, then the dough begins to harden, a crust appears.
• Cooling down... Any bread you really want to eat right away, but in most cases it will be right to let it cool a little on the wire rack. During this time, a redistribution of moisture occurs, and the dough is actually cooked up due to the residual heat (since the pizza is thin, this applies to a lesser extent).

I'm sure all of this - except, maybe, words like "enzymes" and "fermentation", you know without me. You also know that yeast thrives best at the optimal temperature, and let the dough rise in a warm place, which allows it to double in size in 30-40 minutes: this way bread and cakes are made faster.

But what if you do the opposite - put the dough in the refrigerator, forcing the yeast to freeze, and stretching the process of raising the dough for several days?

Who would ever think of such nonsense, you ask. This is not nonsense at all, I say. This is a special culinary technique called "cold fermentation" and is used in the preparation of bread and other products such as. Let's figure out why cold fermentation is needed.

Why put dough in the refrigerator?

As usual, it's not that simple. Although the main reason we add yeast to the dough is because it produces carbon dioxide, there are also by-products of its activity - substances that are ultimately responsible for the taste of the dough as well. The rapid rise of the dough forces the yeast to eat all the sugars available to it in literally a few hours, after which the production stops. If the temperature is lowered, the yeast will not multiply so quickly, and it will have more time to produce flavoring components that ennoble the taste of bread.

Is this the only thing? Not at all. The fermentation of the dough, artificially slowed down by the low temperature, contributes to the formation of stronger gluten bonds (remember, during the rise, not only yeast, but also enzymes work), and the dough is more fluffy. For this reason, a “leopard” color of the crust appears in a properly cooked pizza: bubbles appear so thin and large at the surface of the dough that the dough is baked in these places and begins to darken earlier. At the same time, since the dough, aged in the cold, turns out to be less dense and more airy, it takes a little less time to bake it completely than to bake the dough, which was tempered with the usual method.

In general, there are two reasons to put the dough in the refrigerator:

• better taste
• better texture

Does this mean that the dough can be proofed indefinitely, constantly improving its taste and texture? Unfortunately no. Like everything in this life, this rule only works up to a certain limit, which is usually referred to as 72 hours.

What happens next? While doing its useful work, yeast simultaneously produces substances that give your future bread a sour taste: in small quantities it is pleasant, in large quantities it is too annoying and spoils the taste of bread. Further - more: at some point, the yeast produces so much acid and alcohol that they themselves are surprised by this, and stop working. As a result, the structure of the dough begins to suffer, because once in the oven, the dough hardly rises. 0

The background to this bread was several things at once: the desire to bake large-porous, airy bread without flour from whole grain flour and my long-term communication with Lyudmila, known to many bloggers-bakers mariana_aga - she is a real professional! It was she who prompted me to think about baking bread, in the technology of which long-term autolysis is used. The embodiment of the idea, as always, was found in Sergey's magazine registrr .


As Sergei himself writes in his blog:
"I want the bread dough to contain only flour, water, salt and yeast. After all, they represent almost the minimum that is necessary for bread." Almost "- because bread can be baked both without salt and without yeast, but without flour with water - nothing!
But I do not want simple bread, but exquisite, beautiful, aromatic, tasty, unusual, at least! Therefore, I will make the dough very moist, so that at first glance, especially for a beginner, it is generally not suitable for baking, because it is not clear how to knead it.
To create a rich taste and aroma, I use a long fermentation at various temperatures. This will be interesting! "
It will be really interesting!

So, I will bake hearth wheat bread with the addition of whole grain flour. The technology of long-term fermentation at various temperatures has been chosen for this bread. To begin with, I introduced 50% of whole grain flour from the total mass of flour, in the future I will try to bring this percentage to 100. As Lyudmila says, you can bake wonderful bread from any flour, you just need to understand flour, its properties and its behavior in the dough. So far for me it is still difficult: there is a lot of new information in my head that has not yet settled down on the shelves. But everything comes with experience!
Ingredients:
Wheat flour 1 grade - 250 grams.
Whole grain wheat flour - 250 grams.
Dry yeast - 1 gram.
Salt - 10 grams.
Water 450 ml.
Preparation:
Stage 1 - kneading dough. It also takes place in two stages: first, the dough is kneaded with a portion of water (370 ml out of 450) and without salt. HP "Pelmeni" mode (this is a kneading mode for 20 minutes). Then the dough is allowed to rest for an hour. During this time, flour proteins absorb water, swell and begin to form gluten. After soaking, the remaining water and all the salt are added according to the recipe. Kneading in the "Pelmeni" mode. This step-by-step addition of water is called double hydration. At the end of kneading, leave the dough in a closed HP for another 1 hour.
Next execute Stage 2 - the stage of long fermentation, as Sergey describes:
Place the cold fermentation dough in the refrigerator on:
- 12 hours at 12-14C;
- 24 hours at 5-6C;
- 35-48 hours at 4C.
Warm the dough selected in the refrigerator at room temperature for 1-1.5 hours. The dough should have clear visual signs of fermentation:
- be bubbly;
- increased in volume two to three times;
- gentle, jelly-like.
And finally Stage 3 - proofing and baking.
Pour the dough onto a floured board, fold into four with an envelope, cover and let rest for 15-20 minutes.
Next, shape the bread blank with movements that tighten the gluten structure into a lump.
Place the blank on a sheet of baking paper for proofing. It is necessary to provide lateral support in any way available.
Proofing - 1.5-2 hours at room temperature.
Sprinkle flour on the bread before baking.
Bake for 50-60 minutes. The first 15 minutes - with steam humidification at T \u003d 250C. The rest of the time is at 200C. Reduce the temperature if the crust burns.
Cool the bread on the wire rack for an hour before use.

The bread did not wait to cool completely on the wire rack: it was cut while still warm. What a crispy crust! What porosity and, most importantly, what flavor! And this is in bread, in which there is not a single ingredient other than water, yeast and flour! And all because in the process of prolonged fermentation, not only yeast fungi multiply in the dough, but also other microflora, which, together with yeast (which release alcohol during fermentation), gives a rich aromatic range. The process of long-term autolysis itself has a lot of positive aspects for dough made from all types of wheat flour. Lyudmila wrote in detail about autolysis

I would like to write about .... I wanted to say "hack", but it would not be correct. Regarding how and when we can shorten or, on the contrary, increase the stages of making bread with sourdough, where we can simplify without prejudice, and what points should be left unchanged. Recipes for sourdough and sourdough bread on the net are dark, and some even directly contradict each other, nevertheless, all this is a real experience that people share and say: look, this is how it also turns out. However, not every experience is worth learning.

Why?

Why, when working with a test, do we do it this way and not another? Let me remind you that we "build" bread dough on sourdough in stages, and it is always a sourdough dough, and then kneading the dough, its subsequent fermentation, cutting, preliminary proving (when the pieces of dough are rounded and allowed to rest before molding) molding, final proofing , notches if necessary, and baked goods with steam. It may seem like too much fuss, but we want to bake delicious, beautiful bread, to achieve the best result, so I personally try not to miss anything that needs to be done with the dough. All this is called "technology", "method", but in fact there is a method that arose for a reason, but based on the physical and chemical properties of the components and their ability to influence each other: flour, water, yeast / starter culture, salt, sugar , oils and other additives.

Understanding the processes occurring with the test, understanding what is for what and what is happening at each stage, if necessary, you can simplify the work with minimal losses. Let's start in order.

1) Sourdough dough.

I usually put it on at night in order to start work in the morning, and I try to use it when it is not fully ripe, swollen, became fluffy, but at the same time it is not overripe or sour strongly (you can read about this method in the article about). What if you can't knead the dough right now? You can put the refrigerator in the dough and calmly transcend the test when you have the opportunity. It can stand in the refrigerator for several hours, depending on the temperature and degree of maturity, this will be enough for you to finish the job, finalize the work, feed and put the children to bed and, finally, do what you love))

2) Autolysis.

I got into the habit of kneading with autolysis, this is especially true for whole grain dough, which takes time so that in addition to protein, bran-germs swell and gluten begins to form. I mix the leaven, water and flour in a dough mixer, cover so that the dough does not dry out, and leave for 20 minutes. Note that the dough made of white flour without the presence of sourdough can sit for 40 minutes, or even an hour, the sourdough dough needs much less time, because the lactic and other acids present in the sourdough contribute to the rapid swelling of the protein. White flour dough, in general, can be kneaded without autolysis, but with whole grain it is better not to neglect it. But what if you don't have time to come to the test after 20 minutes of autolysis? If you stay for 10-15 minutes, that's okay, but if it's longer, take a second and put the dough in the refrigerator. The low temperature will slow down the enzymes that break down the gluten, and you can start kneading when the opportunity arises. But if you think in advance that you will not be able to come to the dough at the right time, mixing it, add salt. It will somewhat slow down protein swelling, but it will also slow down enzymes. And in the refrigerator! And if you put the dough in the refrigerator, keep in mind that it will ferment slowly until it gets warm.

3) Kneading.

Here I don't even know what to say, if you knead with your hands, then you are just talking about machine and manual kneading. If you are too lazy to knead, knead in folds, with periodic short approaches to the dough, or in the process of active kneading, let the dough rest for 5 minutes to relax the gluten, this is a very good way. And here it is important to remember that it is better not to knead than to knead, maybe the bread will turn out to be not so lush, but tasty - for sure. By the way, you can read about overmixing and why the bread turns out to be tasteless because of it in this article.

4) Adding additives and oils.

You can toss seeds, raisins and nuts at the beginning of the knead, but then these additions will make it difficult for the dough to develop gluten, because they will tear it when kneading. Even bread makers are designed to add all kinds of additives towards the end of the batch, when the dough is already formed. Likewise with oil.

5) Fermentation and proofing.

With fermentation in general, there are a lot of options. The sourdough dough is convenient because it wanders for a long time and, while it wanders, you can redo a bunch of things and even take a walk with children or go to the store. To speed up the process, you can put it in a warmer place and if you have proofing cabinet Brod & Taylor , this is very simple to do, there the temperature is set and stably maintained until you change it. If you want to increase the fermentation time, the refrigerator will help you, there the dough can stand for a long time, up to 8 hours, and grow slowly. Likewise with the final proofing. If you bake several loaves in turn, while one is baking, the second, so as not to overstay, can be hidden in the refrigerator and so on until baking.

6) Pre-proofing.

You can skip this stage, but in order to form a workpiece with high quality, it is better to do it. What is it for at all? You divide the dough into chunks to bake two or more loaves, round, and let the dough rest a little. For one thing, why not mold and put the dough in right away? Pre-proofing will allow you to form better quality. By rounding the pieces, you are already giving them the correct shape, and by allowing the gluten to relax on the matting, you get the opportunity to shape them tighter, while maintaining the internal structure of the dough and the bubbles in it. Bread formed in this way keeps its shape better in proofing and during baking and turns out to be more fluffy and rounded. Tense gluten during stretching can break, and the dough can resist (try to separate the dough and roll it out immediately after active kneading, it will resist and shrink), and if you let the gluten relax a little, you can create with it, which is good. Likewise and relatively, if you do not divide the dough, bake one loaf of them all.

7) The only thing you can't cheat with is baking and moisturizing.

The baking temperature must be high enough. If you initially choose a low oven or heat up the oven insufficiently, the workpiece will float and will not be very fluffy, if you overdo it, the bread will burn and the crumb will be too dry. It is the same with steam at the beginning of baking, if the moisture is too much and the moisture is too long (longer than 15 minutes), the cuts will not open and become equal to the crust, and the crust will turn out to be smooth and shiny.

Recently, I happened to visit a local bakery, where they recently started baking sourdough bread. Before I tell you how they do it, I will say that their bread is really tasty. So, bakers, in order to optimize production, skip the fermentation process before baking, knead the dough, immediately shape it and put it to proof.

On the one hand, how can you wander after kneading, fold it in an envelope, strengthen the gluten, dance with a tambourine? And so, production costs. On the one hand, it somehow turns out wrong, but there is a big difference in what professional bakers do, skipping fermentation, and we, amateur beginners. They know and understand what they are doing and why and they have excellent bread at the end, and practice, as you know, is the criterion of truth. But if we start to create whatever we want, we will never learn how to bake good bread and work freely with different bread dough, because without knowing the basics, there will be no sense in such work.

Honestly, I immediately tried to repeat their experience and also skip the fermentation process, but in the end it turned out badly. I didn't wait for the bread to fit as it should (but at that moment it seemed to me that it went well)), baked it, it turned out, in general, tasty, but flat, and this “flat” applies to both the taste and appearance of the bread ... In addition, the dough behaved somewhat differently during molding, it was too pliable and inelastic.

In the next article, since I had the opportunity to shoot in a bakery, I will tell you how the professional production of bread works, what technique is used in the bakery and compare with what we can do at home. And, of course, I will tell you in more detail how local bakers got used to baking sourdough bread without fermenting it after kneading.