Pete-zza-Need Help With Forumla for Kefir Lehmann Dough

[norma427]

Peter,

I will post a worksheet from the last dough made with the milk kefir and also print a sheet from the preferment dough calculating tool to show exactly what formula I am using on the next attempt of your recommendation of using 80% of the milk kefir in the total water formula.  I will let the preferment dough calculating tool figure out what amounts of all the ingredients to use.  I agree going to 49.6 should give us a large range to see if the milk kefir works out in a Lehmann dough.  I would also like to shorten the milk kefir preferment time and the final dough room ferment time.  I wonder if I make sure the milk kefir is ready by Friday, if I should then try to mix the final dough on Friday with the milk kefir and let it cold ferment for 3 days in the deli case.  I am not sure, but it seems when the dough ball made with the milk kefir is cold fermenting, it ferments a lot slower than with the Ischia Starter or even the preferment Lehmann dough.  That is one of the reasons it also needs to be left out at ambient room temperatures for so long.  I also noticed how slow the milk kefir starter, slowly fermented in the Tartine Country Bread, when that dough was left to cold ferment.

Maybe I also should make two dough balls and then freeze one to see if the milk kefir dough can be frozen.

Thanks for your help,

Norma

[norma427]

worksheet for pizza made 11/09/10

Norma

[norma427]

This is the next worksheet from the Preferment Dough Calculation Tool, when making two dough balls with milk kefir poolish.  I don’t know at this time what I am going to do with the extra dough ball.

Norma

[Pete-zza]

I don’t know at this time what I am going to do with the extra dough ball.

Norma,

You can make milk kefir Montreal-style bagels  . The dough ball will make about four bagels using widespreadpizza's recipe.

Peter

[Pete-zza]

Norma,

I did look at all of the pH numbers for the different dough balls you made using the milk kefir poolish. It seems that the last dough with the long fermentation times had a lower final pH value than the other doughs. However, it is hard to know what to make of this, given the differences between the ways that the different dough balls were managed. I think you would have to use the identical dough formulation but for the amount of poolish, subject the dough balls to similar fermentation protocols (the durations of events should be different) and otherwise try to manage the dough balls as identically as possible. Then, the pH values might be more telling. I don't think that I would do anything different at this point. Let's see what the next two dough balls do.

Thanks for running all of the pH numbers. It has been instructive even though it is not quite clear how to best use them at this point.

Peter

[norma427]

Norma,

You can make milk kefir Montreal-style bagels  . The dough ball will make about four bagels using widespreadpizza's recipe.

Peter

Peter,

Those Montreal-style bagels sure look good that Marc made.    I have tasted many NY bagels, but never heard of Montreal style bagels before Marc’s post.  I have some Diastatic Malt Powder here at home from another experiment.  Maybe I should also add some of that to my formula of milk kefir. Who knows how that pizza or bagels would turn out.    Good to hear how many bagels my extra dough ball would make.

Do you think I should also include the autolyse in this current dough for two dough balls, like I did the last time?  It will be interesting to see what happens with these two dough balls and the final pizzas.

Thanks for looking at all the pH numbers from the different doughs balls I have made so far with the milk kefir.  I also can’t tell what pH numbers tell so far, but I will keep on taking them.  Maybe someday they will be helpful. 

Norma

[Pete-zza]

Do you think I should also include the autolyse in this current dough for two dough balls, like I did the last time?

Norma,

That's up to you. However, to compare what you get with the next milk kefir dough ball with the last one you made with the 30% poolish, which turned out well, you might want to use the autolyse again. We can assess later whether to try an experiment without the autolyse.

Peter

[norma427]

I mixed the milk kefir poolish this morning and am going to take it along to market later today to try and proof the milk kefir poolish in the Hatco Unit. I have left the milk kefir grains ferment in the same raw milk since Monday evening.  I haven’t drained the milk kefir grains any other days this week.  This morning I took the pH of the milk kefir before I mixed the poolish and it was 3.87.  In the yellow part of the milk kefir there is starting to be a more stringy part as can be seen on the pictures below.  I also tasted the milk kefir and it still just tastes a little tart.

When I mixed the milk kefir into the poolish, there didn’t seem to be enough milk kefir to make the milk kefir starter look like a poolish, so I added another 2 grams of milk kefir to the poolish.  The milk kefir poolish now looks just like paste.  The milk kefir poolish was mixed at 9:30 am. After mixing the milk kefir in with the flour the pH then was 4.15. 

The milk kefir grains are growing as can be seen in the one other picture.  I also started a mixture of water kefir grains in dried cherries.  The picture below is after the water kefir grains have fermented in about 4 days.  They are being fed raw sugar.

Pictures below

Norma

[norma427]

rest of pictures

Norma

[Kaa]

Hmm... Since I have kefir grains and am playing now with pizza-making, this thread looks very useful.

A bit more about kefir as such. Basically, the time for it to get ready depends on three things: temperature, the amount of kefir grains relative to the milk, and whether or not you mix/shake/agitate the kefir as it matures. This summer was hot and I had problems with kefir being too quick -- now that it's fall the whole thing became more manageable. I set things up so that my kefir cycle is 24 hours -- it's very convenient. To achieve that at my room temperature I use the proportion of 1:10 of kefir grains to milk and I do *not* agitate. My milk, by the way, is regular store milk.

Note that (from my point of view, at least) the kefir is NOT READY YET when you separate the grains from the kefir. I put it into a container and it goes into the fridge where it continues to develop for 24-72 hours. The longer you leave it, the more sour it will be. For my taste, 1-2 days is about right.

Kefit left too long will separate into curds and whey. You can make sour-ish cottage cheese out of it.

I'm still too much of a newbie to play with kefir starters, but once I get my standard pizza routine down pat, I'll start experimenting and will definitely explore the possibilities of making kefir-leavened dough.

Kaa

[norma427]

Kaa,

Welcome to the forum.  Thanks for giving more information about making milk kefir.  I have started learning about how the milk kefir grains ferments a short while ago and have been doing some experiments with how long the milk can be left in with the grains.  I have put the milk kefir in the refrigerator and drink some even days later.  I haven’t noticed that much difference in the taste, except it might get a little tarter, when left in the refrigerator.  I have seen the milk kefir turn into curds and whey, but now they don’t seem to be separating.  Do you have any ideas why that is happening?  Even if left for 4 days in the same milk, it doesn’t separate into curds and whey.  How long have you been making milk kefir?

I hope you will join us in experimenting with milk kefir to leaven a pizza dough.  I made two dough balls today to be used on Tuesday, using a milk kefir poolish. I will post the pictures tomorrow. 

Norma

[norma427]

The milk kefir poolish went along with me to market.  I placed the milk kefir poolish in the Hatco Unit when I first arrived at market.  The temperature of my Hatco Unit is usually kept at around 110-115 degrees F.  My usual poolish for the Preferment Lehmann dough usually takes around 1 ½ hrs to 1 3/4 hrs to develop enough bubbles to be put into the deli case.  The milk kefir poolish was left in the Hatco Unit for two hours.  The first picture shows the milk kefir poolish before I left market.

The second picture shows the two dough balls after they was made with the milk kefir poolish.  I also gave this dough a 15 minute autolyse.  Total time the milk kefir poolish was left between ambient temperatures and the Hatco Unit was 7 hours.  Third picture is how the dough balls look this morning.  I didn’t take a picture of the bottom of the dough balls, but they don’t look like they are fermenting very much.  In the past when using the milk kefir, I found that the dough does ferment slower, when using the milk kefir, when cold fermented.  I found it interesting that although I made these two dough balls in a matter of minutes,  the one dough ball developed bubbles on the top.  I think, but don’t know, that the way you go about forming dough balls has something to do with how much air you incorporate into the dough ball while forming it.  I still haven’t decided what to do with the extra dough ball.

pH of final dough 5.01.  Final dough temperature 79.2.

Norma

[Pete-zza]

Total time the milk kefir poolish was left between ambient temperatures and the Hatco Unit was 7 hours.

Norma,

To be sure I got the above time right, does the above quote mean that you left the milk kefir poolish at room temperature for 5 hours and then placed it in the Hatco unit for 2 more hours?

Peter

[norma427]

Norma,

To be sure I got the above time right, does the above quote mean that you left the milk kefir poolish at room temperature for 5 hours and then placed it in the Hatco unit for 2 more hours?

Peter

Peter,

Yes, your are right that it took a total time of 5 hours at room ambient temperatures at home and then another 2 hours in the Hatco Unit for a total of 7 hours for the milk keifr poolish to ferment to the point I thought it might be ready to use in the Lehmann dough.  I don’t have any idea of how long the milk kefir poolish would have taken if I had just kept it in the Hatco Unit, but temperatures in the Hatco Unit are warm.  I have found that when making the larger batches of poolish for the Preferment Lehmann dough, the larger amounts do bubble faster. 

Since I am not following the same protocol as the Preferment Lehmann dough, (first let the poolish bubble a little, cold ferment poolish for 3 days, incorporate into the final dough, ferment for one more day), I don’t ever think that will be possible with using the milk kefir poolish.  The final dough with the milk kefir poolish seems to ferment too slowly. I would like to shorten the temper times of the poolish and even the final dough, but I don’t know if that will be possible.  Right now I would be satisfied to see with using a larger amount of poolish, if the natural sugars can be preserved.

Norma

[norma427]

Well at least I know that milk kefir can make good bagels.  I used the milk kefir to make bagels today.  Marc had posted about making the Fairmont bagels.  If you are interested in seeing what the bagels looked like using the milk kefir, this is the link.  http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,11832.msg117231.html#msg117231

Norma

[norma427]

This is how the one dough ball looks tonight with the milk kefir poolish.  It sure hasn’t fermented much, even with the added amount of poolish.  This was the dough that was made Friday.

Pictures below

Norma

[norma427]

The pizza was made today with the added amount of milk kefir poolish.  The pizza did turn out well.  The crumb was very moist and the bottom had a nice char.  In my opinion the char looks different than the last pie I made.  There also was a nice crispness in the crust when taking bites of this pizza.  The dough ball was left out for 6 hrs. at ambient room temperatures of around 78 degrees F.  The pH of the dough ball right before the bake was 4.90.  The pH didn’t change much since Friday.  I am wondering what would happen if even more poolish with the milk kefir would be added. This dough does take a while to ferment, before it is ready to be made into a pizza.

Pictures below

Norma

[norma427]

more pictures

Norma

[norma427]

more pictures

Norma

[norma427]

end of pictures

Norma