Something new happened to my Lehman type dough yesterday.
When I was doing the initial mix, where the dough is usually all scrappy and starts to come together, it never really came together. It stayed scrappy and crumbly and didn't come together really. This is usually the part where I add the oil, and nothing improved when I added the oil. So then I added more water and it all came together in a sloppy wet-playdough type way. Well I toughed it out and took and extra long time kneeding this dough in the mixer on varying speeds until it kindaaaa passed the window pain test. I then balled the dough and put it in the fridge. The ball rose slightly, but it felt really dense. I cooked the dough and needless to say the bread was dense, tasteless, and mostly flat. It did rise when cooking and it had some oven spring...but mostly it had the texture of bowling alley pizza dough.
My recipe is as follows and by volume:
1 cup flour
1/3 cup of water, plus 1 tbsp more
1/6 tsp IDY
1/2 tsp salt
2/3 tsp sugar
1 tsp oil
Could it be that the flour or IDY is too old/stale??? Another note is these little scrappy pieces were moist...so it wasn't really a moisture problem.
