Comments on: The Autolyse Method

By: Beth

Beth — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 06:57:45 +0000

James: As you can see in the above post, you’re right about not adding the yeast pre-autolyse. Ideally, you would only mix the flour and water first, let it rest, then add the yeast and salt. But in an ideal world, we’d all have steam-injecting ovens and perfect sourdough starters in our fridges, too! I can tell you from personal experience that even with yeast, salt, milk, butter, eggs, spices, herbs, and partidges in pear trees added into the mixture, a 15 minute pre-kneading rest will improve any and every dough. It might not be a textbook autolyse, but it absolutely helps the texture and flavor of a dough. Thanks for the comment, and happy baking!

By: james

james — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 22:37:34 +0000

I think your bread recipe misses the point of autolyse.The flour and water mixed ahead of time affords the enzymes in the flour to activate and at the same time gluten strands to beome elongated thereby reducing mixing time later.However your adding yeast defeats the autolyse altogether,because adding the yeast upfront itself changes the enzymes properties along with other dynamics.I would mix flour and water solely and reserve part of the water to dissolve the yeast after autolyse,after yeast is added i would give a 10 minute delay before sprinkling the salt in,then finish in the usual manner

By: Beth

Beth — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 14:26:39 +0000

Lars: You can use water, but it helps if it’s boiling first. The ice cubes work well because they release tiny amounts of water as they melt, which boils so quickly it almost instantly turns to steam. (Or that’s one principle, anyway.) Ramekins of water wouldn’t work as well, even if the water was boiling when you put them in, since there’s not much surface area for steam to evaporate from. Broad, flat areas of water work best, since you get more steam from more surface area. I’ve actually found that spritzing the dough with water from a squirt bottle works the best, but I give these alternate instructions for those who don’t have a food-safe squirt bottle (but everyone’s got ice!).

Also, even if your oven heats from the top, I don’t recommend throwing ice cubes directly onto the floor of the oven. It causes a discoloration that’s hard to remove, and can damage the oven (I forget exactly how). It also cools off your oven floor, basically ruining the point of an oven (it cooks via radiated heat from the walls, not from the heating element itself).

Thanks for the comments, and happy baking!

By: Beth

Beth — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 14:12:12 +0000

Terry: For an autolyse, the resting time is limited to about an hour or less. Anything longer than that, and I think it falls into the realm of “starter”. Generally speaking, the longer a dough sits, the better the flavor ends up; but there’s a host of other factors that can make or break the texture and taste (amount of yeast, dough temperature, ambient temperature and humidity, level of hydration in the dough, quality of ingredients, etc, etc, etc.). As long as you intelligently control those other factors, a dough can sit for ages, and only get better. But for the fastest and simplest way to turbo-charge your bread’s flavor (as it were), you just can’t beat a 15 minute autolyse. It really, really makes a huge difference, in any bread.

Happy baking!

By: Lars Clausen

Lars Clausen — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 14:13:59 +0000

Or is it simply that if you use water, you end up creating an insulating layer, but if you use ice cubes they just give off some moisture? I have tried with rammikins (sp) of water with no noticable difference to the bread.

By: Lars Clausen

Lars Clausen — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 14:05:02 +0000

One note on the ice cubes (why ice cubes? why not just water): If the oven is of the kind that also heats from the bottom, you risk losing a significant amount of heating. I found this out the hard way:)

By: Terry Diss

Terry Diss — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 18:45:59 +0000

Autolyse….some say do this for 20mins to one hour…..some say, even better to do it for upto 2 days. Any thoughts on this please. TD