# Spiking a dough



## thebighat (Feb 21, 2001)

Hey Kyle,, you home this weekend? I have a tub of refreshed sourdough starter I am going to make some onion caraway rye with following the crust and crumb barm formula. He mentions in the apprentice you can spike a dough with instant yeast, but sort of diffidently says add 1 1/2 tsp to the dough. You ever do this? Do you suppose that one figures out the percentage as a part of the flour in the dough, or all of it, the flour in the starter, the flour in the sponge and the flour in the dough, because that will certainly add up to a different basis.

Sponge--32 oz starter
18 oz rye
24 oz onion

Dough all the sponge
54 oz flour (18 oz rye, 36 oz bread flour)
1.5 oz salt
1 oz honey
32 oz water
3 tsp ground caraway

This would be the normal 4 hours and 4 hours, but I want to try and cut that down. 2% yeast would really blow this up. What do you think, .5%, .25%, just to cut down the bulk ferment and proof? Anybody else got an inkling?


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## kylew (Aug 14, 2000)

No, I've never done it. I just looked at the book. I weighed out 1 1/2 tsp of instant yeast and came up with just under 1/4 oz. His formula uses 20.25 oz of flour=100%. He lists the firm starter as 49.4% so it looks like he is using just the flour in the final dough as 100% This would put the yeast spike at around 1.2%.


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## thebighat (Feb 21, 2001)

I did some more digging. 1.5 tsp is .16 oz, which makes that amount .8%, I thinkof 20.25 oz. The crust and crumb formula uses 25 oz of sponge to 27 oz of flour in the dough. I doubled it, so I have 54 oz of flour times .8 is 54 x .008= .43 oz, which is so close to a little less than a quarter times two. and .8 or 1.2 are so close I think we're in the ballpark here. The sponge is ready right now so I'm going to make the dough and should have bread within 4 hours as opposed to 8. We'll see. I'm going to use some of this very vigorous starter in place of the poolish in his focaccia, which is my normal pizza dough. Family coming tomorrow, pizza out of the oven, char siu chicken off the grill. thanks.


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## kylew (Aug 14, 2000)

The way I read it, he definately uses the weight of the flour in the final dough as 100% He does not include the weight of the flour in the firm starter. My scale only weighs in 1/4 ounce increments. The 1 1/2 Tsp of yeast barely registered 1/4 ounce, and I may have coaxed it to do that. I think your .16 is probably closer but as you point out, it likely amounts to about a 4 yeast cell diffenence  Keep us posted!


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## thebighat (Feb 21, 2001)

Oh, that absolutely worked. I have two loaves of sourdough onion caraway rye the size of hams sitting on the cooling rack. Loaf A ruptured, but loaf B is perfect looking. 
I used the weights Reinhart gives in Apprentice...1 tsp instant is .11 oz. If I hadn't used the money I was going to buy the Fuji 3800 with to buy new sneakers for the car, you'd all be looking at a picture of said bread. BTW, who is this Jewel I keep seeing on vh1 and where has she been? We had to drop the hammer on Kazaa here because the computer got one of those trojan horses that slows the system down to a crawl...music companies were recently saying they were going to piggyback these things onto music files. Make sure your antivirus subscription is paid up.


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## kylew (Aug 14, 2000)

I'm glad to hear the experiment was a success. I'll have to file it away for a rainy day. Do Air Jordans come in 75-R-14?


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