Autolyse

The term autolyse is a biological term referring to to the action of enzymes that are already in the grain. They are responsible for the breakdown of the starches in the grain during germination that makes food (in the form of sugars) available for growth of the plant. In our case, the same enzymes work to create food for the sourdough culture AND cause gluten to develop without kneading! It is still not clear why the wheat plant would need this to happen but it is a handy aid that we've only discovered very recently.

Although the culture is happy for the food, on the baker's side we are after the gluten development and so it's useful to know that salt, oil and acidity all interfere to some extent with gluten development. The logical conclusion then is to use this natural process BEFORE adding, pre-ferment, salt or oil to the main dough

This link explains a bit more about the process:

Autolyse Example (Noah's Ark Sourdough)

Using the Noah's Ark Sourdough Recipe, instead of mixing the pre-ferment, allowing that to ripen and only then mixing the main dough (like in The Basics page) what we do is mix the main dough at the same time as the pre-ferment.

Pre-ferment top (2 wht + starter)

Main dough below (3 wht, 2 brwn)

After adding our water as per the recipe to the respective dough's (and being careful to mix our main dough before our pre-ferment so we don't ferment the main dough) we allow the pre-ferment to ripen (about 6hrs) and the main dough to autolyse. Autolyse can take place in the fridge and is preferred to reduce the chance of fermentation

WhatsApp Video 2019-07-24 at 07.45.33.mp4

Mixing Pre-Ferment & Main Dough

Note that in this video because of a vegetable puree the dough is quite a bit more sticky than usual. In general the autolysed dough require less stretch/ folding than this

Once the pre-ferment and main dough are mixed, the dough is left to rest for 15-30 mins and then oil and salt are added and the recipe proceeds as described in the Noah's Ark recipe. The difference should be a much better dough with the ability to stretch very thinly without tearing as shown below:

This method of autolysing the main dough separately from the pre-ferment together with a fresh, active starter are the two keys that have significantly improved the quality of our dough's and ultimately our bread. In general they can be applied to all of the recipes on this site (and probably many others that use sourdough pre-ferments).