Yeasty Brown Bread

When writing a blog it's always tempting to only record your successes and quietly forget about the failures, but analysing these is probably the best way to improve. So what happened? I was given some Tesco Brown Bread flour that was two years out of date. As it looked and smelt fine, and not wanting to waste food, I decided to use it to make a loaf. I intended following my normal procedure except I used about 3g of yeast and left the dough to ferment at room temperature, instead of putting it in the fridge. It didn't work out this way as the dough seemed too dry in the mixer so I added some more water. Unfortunately I didn't measure the amount so I ended up making the dough wetter than I normally would. Since I keep reading that "wetter is better" I didn't try to correct it with more flour.
The next morning the dough had almost filled its 4L container, which this quantity doesn't normally do. I knocked it back. During the rest of the day the dough filled the container again and then sank back a bit. This, combined with the yeasty smell, was a sign that perhaps things were not perfect.

I shaped the dough for the tin and left it to proof at 30C. After two hours it was still not quite at the top of the tin and the poke test suggested it was still not fully proofed. Running out of time and hoping that being underproofed would give good oven spring it went in the oven. There was no oven spring.

Disappointing rise

As you can see, I slashed the top. I thought it would help the oven spring but it just healed up. After it cooled it was time to taste. Tasted off, very yeasty. After a couple of days we have eaten about half of it - it tastes better toasted, but it's not great. The rest will go as breadcrumbs for a treacle tart or to the birds.

So why did it go wrong? As the dough was quite wet I think the fermentation was much quicker - it was much nearer a poolish or starter. Having seen the dough was wet I should have put it in the fridge. I've left dough to ferment at room temperature for this long before without the yeasty taste, so I think the quicker fermentation used up all the fermentable sugars, even though I had added sugar.

Initially I didn't think the age of the flour was an issue but I have since read in Andrew Whitley's Bread Matters that "The yeast may be exhausted or may not have a sufficient supply of fermentable sugars in the dough at the time of the final rise or proof. This may be due to using a flour with a naturally low level of amylase or flour that is a bit old." I have relegated this flour to dusting duty.

I don't think this photo shows it but the crumb looks odd.