At the beginning of 2009, I resolved to “get down with yeast doughs” this year. Whoops. Not sure how the whole year got away from me, but I did not rip open a single packet of yeast.
I also acquired a nice marble slab, and have managed to roll out only two pie crusts on the thing.
So! I’m springing into action. Forging ahead with the Tartine morning buns, per this source.
Which starts with the Tartine croissant dough recipe, which everyone always seems to be googling for. I snapped photos of the relevant pages from a friend’s cookbook. The procedure is ridiculously long and complex. (Which is why I think no one has yet to post it online. Six pages, people!)
But the real catch, every time I’ve thought, ‘Oh! Maybe tonight I’ll start the pre-ferment!’, is that the first ingredient is
Nonfat milk
Uh. That is something we never, ever have lying around the house.
So I finally bought some, furtively, hoping no one would see my shameful purchase. Tonight, we begin! At least one yeast dough will be made before the year is out!
Why nonfat milk? I abhor the stuff, personally – it’s only good for feeding the pigs or chickens, as far as I’m concerned. But I am curious as to why nonfat milk was specified, from a scientific point of view… does it interact with other ingredients a specific way? Is there something about the lack of fat that enhances something else in the recipe? Are you simply soaking some kind of grain product to make it more digestible? Is it just a liquid that shouldn’t act as a flavor carrier? Very curious here!
I have no idea! And I hate a recipe that doesn’t explain why. I think it has something to do with the yeast growth in the early stages? I think I’ll go poke around in Harold McGee and see if he has an answer.
Meg, I’ve concocted my own theory about this now, after having read something about active dry yeast in Saveur. Apparently the granules are all dead yeast on the outside, and hold a little nugget of live yeast inside. So these need to be proofed (ie, soaked in warm liquid) to activate them, which is what everyone does anyway, usually just with water. If you were to use a fatty liquid to proof the yeast, I think the fat would coat the granules too much and hinder the dissolving process. But milk has lots of nice tasty sugars for the yeast to feed on, so by using nonfat milk for proofing, I think this recipe is just trying to capitalize on the sugariness of milk to give the yeast an early boost and develop the flavor–the proofing stage in this recipe is what they call a “pre-ferment,” where you make a kind of gooey mix of yeast, warm milk and flour, and let that sit around at room temp for a few hours.
Sounds totally plausible, right? I am sure I will read something tomorrow that will discredit the theory completely (or talk to someone who knows something about baking, and who will say, duh, no), but for now…