4 day dough showing traces of alcohol or vinegar

[Y-TOWN]

4 day dough fermenting

I use a heavy sugar (2 Tsp.) and heavy yeast (1 packet) for 8 cups of flour recipe which is great for one or two day dough.

I just noticed a stronger vinegar smell when I opened a bag today which was a 4 day old dough.

I suspect this is the yeast and sugar turning into alcohol or ?

I'm wondering how some folks on this board use a dough 7 days old which I reason would be more fermented than my 4 day dough.

Is it the longer cured dough's are made using less sugar and yeast than I am and the fermenting process is slowed down?   

[canadianbacon]

Indeed what you are detecting is a bit of alcohol there, but I wouldn't worry about it.

I did a 4 day yeast dough for pizza last month and it was one of the best doughs I had made,
a real soury-dough taste to it... I really enjoyed it.

Keeping it 7 days ? ... not sure how it is done, but I would expect that it would be a dough with lower
sugar and yeast content, and or colder temps for that length of time.

[November]

I'm wondering how some folks on this board use a dough 7 days old

You didn't mentioned what kind of yeast you used, but in the case of a 7g packet of yeast (e.g. ADY, IDY, RapidRise), people who want their dough to last seven days don't use 0.677%.

[eric22]

Just cook it damnit!   

[Y-TOWN]

Like I figured a lot of sugar and yeast (Rapid Rise full packet) in my dough recipe had to cause the earlier vinegar/alcohol products appearance compared to using less sugar and yeast for a much longer cold rise

[November]

Rkos,

It's not the sugar; just the yeast.  What you're adding in the way of sugar is actually not that much, only about 0.8% when some use up to 2% or more.

- red.november

[Y-TOWN]

red.november,

I follow you.

When I first got the two hour dough recipe I use from the cooking school in Cleveland, Ohio the measurement was 2 TSP of sugar in four cups of flour and one packet of rapid rise yeast.

I now make the same recipe in an eight cup flour size and typically freeze a few dough's.

I've never doubled the sugar or yeast for the eight flour cup size (still use the four cup measurements for yeast and sugar).

Still comes out really good for a few hour dough and the other cuts are placed in zip locks in the frig for the weekend (usually Friday afternoon is when the dough is made). What's left on Sunday night is frozen for a quick weekday lunch or dinner.

One thing I have noticed is I have a harder time browning the top crust which is probably caused by the smaller amount of sugar in the recipe.  I never thought about this top browning problem until your post -= it's the smaller amount of sugar - THANKS !!.