I played for the first time with my Zo's Home Made capability (lets you
manually move from cycle to cycle so you can define your own timings) and I
could use some help on the theory behind selecting knead and rise times and
otherwise coaxing yeast to eat and thrive.
The problem:
I can't use wheat flour, so I use other flours including 1/6 gluten (1/2
cup out of 3 cups flour total). I get quite good bread, but it only rises
to within an inch or so of the top of the pan, so I thought I would try to
extend the rise times. I tried Knead 10, Rise 15, Knead 20, Rise 60,
Punchdown, Rise 80, Bake 60. I noticed that after about an hour of the
second rise the bread simply stopped rising. To be certain, I left the
second rise for two hours, and observed that there was no further change.
So obviously the yeast had died. The resulting bread was fine, no
different from what I was used to using the White/Whole Grain cycle. All
of this is with the SAF yeast, 1 3/4 tsp.
The questions:
What is going on? Why did the yeast die -- apparently this is happening
with the preprogrammed cycles as well, with just about every mixture of
flours I try. What can I do about it? Note that most of my breads use 1
3/4 tsp SAF yeast, 2 1/2 cups various non-wheat flours (well, usually I
include some Kamut flour which is a wheat, technically), 1/2 cup gluten, 1
1/2 - 2 TB oil, 1 1/2 - 2 TB honey or barley malt syrup, 1 1/8 tsp salt,
and about 1/2 - 1 tsp liquid lecithin.
Any pointers welcome, and thanks in advance for them
- susan