Brioche – The Dough Academy

One of the most annoying things that can happen is leaving your brioche dough to rise, coming back to it after 2 hours, and seeing that it hasn’t risen one bit. And all of this time you were thinking about the amazing brioche that you were going to eat. So why did this happen? The most common reasons why a brioche dough won’t rise are: bad or inactive yeast, improper water temperature, mixing salt and yeast together, using the wrong flour type, insufficient kneading, and improper rising conditions. As you can see, there are quite a few things that can stop your brioche dough from rising, but fortunately, most of those problems can be easily fixed. But, in order to fix them, you first have to know how they affect your dough. So let’s start with that. 1. Bad Yeast The first thing that you want to do is to check if your yeast is still good. You can do this by adding a little bit of warm water to a glass, and then mixing in a teaspoon of yeast and a teaspoon of sugar. If after 15 minutes the surface of the water is filled with foam, then the yeast is good. If there is little or no foam on top then the yeast is good. Yeast can go bad for a lot of reasons, like being too old or being kept in improper conditions. And on some rare occasions, the yeast might have been bad before it got packaged. Dry yeast should be kept in the recipient that you bought it. And after you open it, you shouldn’t keep it for more than a few days. When you open the package you expose the yeast to humidity, which will partially activate it, and when you want to use it it won’t be very efficient. This is why I recommend only buying yeast in small packages. Fresh yeast is quite different from dry yeast (more about this in just a moment), it has a shelf life of 3 weeks, but the closer you get to the end of those 3 weeks, the less efficient it will be. So my advice is to only buy fresh yeast when you want to use it the same week. 2. Inactive Yeast There are 3 different types of yeast: Active Dry Yeast Instant Dry Yeast Fresh Yeast Instant dry yeast is made out of very small yeast granules, which can be mixed with all of the ingredients and will do its job. On the other hand, active dry yeast has slightly bigger granules, and it first has to be activated. If you mix it from the start with all of the ingredients it won’t be able to make the dough rise properly. To activate the yeast you simply have to mix it with water until it dissolves completely. The same thing applies to fresh yeast, you first have to activate it, before mixing it with the rest of the ingredients. If you don’t activate the yeast first, there is still a chance that your dough will rise, but it will require a lot more time to do so, and it won’t rise to its full potential. Dry Yeast vs Fresh Yeast One small note about the differences between fresh and dry east. I’ve used both fresh yeast and dry yeast and the only significant difference between the two of them is the shelf life. There is no difference when it comes to taste. While dry yeast typically uses a different strain of yeast, than the fresh one, when you are using it for brioche you shouldn’t feel the difference in taste. If you were to make something that doesn't have any toppings, such as bread or doughnuts, then you would probably feel a small difference in taste. But in the case of brioche, which has some toppings you shouldn’t notice any difference. Another difference is the amount you will have to use. Fresh yeast is less powerful than dry yeast. So if a recipe calls for dry yeast, you can’t just use the same amount of fresh yeast. 3. Water Temperature Regardless of what type of yeast you are using, if you are using hot water, you will make the yeast useless. Yeast is very sensitive to high temperatures and will die at temperatures around 120-140°F (50-60°C). But, cold water can be just as bad. While yeast can survive freezing temperatures, the colder the water is, the slower the yeast will be, so it will need a lot more time to make the dough rise. The temperature of the water should be around 100°F (38°C). At this temperature, the yeast will be as active as it can be, for the longest time possible. The best way to measure the temperature of the water is to use a cooking thermometer. But if you don’t have one right now, you can use hot water from the sink, the hottest water that you can get from the sink can reach temperatures up to 120°F(50°C). So it shouldn’t be hard to stay under that temperature. 4. Salt Salt does a lot of great things for dough, it enhances the flavor, it improves the texture, and it helps the gluten develop. But at the same time, salt can completely ruin a dough. If salt and yeast enter in contact directly, the salt will drastically reduce the power of the yeast, and in some cases will stop the effects of the yeast completely. So, when you are making any kind of dough make sure that the salt and yeast are not next to each other. I usually mix the salt with the flour and the yeast with the water and then mix them all together, and I never had any problem, so I would recommend you to try the same thing. Now we are done with the ingredients so let’s move to the next part, kneading. 5. Bad Flour While we typically don’t think of flour as something that can go bad it absolutely can. In general flour has a shelf life of about 6 months. Whole wheat and gluten free flour will usually go bad sooner. So check the bag and see if the flour is still good. 6. Improper Kneading Kneading is an overlooked, but very important step that affects the rising power of the dough. On average a brioche dough should be kneaded for at least 10 minutes, in order to develop a good and strong gluten network that will make the brioche dough rise. In order for a dough to rise it needs two things, yeast, and gluten. The yeast will produce C02, which makes the dough rise. And gluten gives the dough its elasticity, its ability to rise. Gluten is naturally found in flour, but just having gluten in your dough is not enough. The gluten needs to develop an elastic network. And one of the most important parts of this is kneading it properly. If you don’t knead the dough properly, the network won’t have enough strength to hold the rising dough, and it will collapse on top of itself. And if you knead the dough too much, the gluten network will become very rigid, and won’t allow the dough to rise. In most cases kneading the dough for 10 minutes should be enough, but everybody kneads their dough in a different way. Some do it more actively while others move at a slower pace, some apply a lot of pressure, while others are gentler. So, timing for how long you knead the dough is not the best solution. What you should be doing instead is checking the consistency of the dough using the windowpane test. This is a very simple test that will tell you if you’ve kneaded your dough enough. Take a small piece of dough and gently start stretching it out, and see if you can obtain a slightly transparent layer in the middle. If you can then you’ve kneaded the dough perfectly. If the dough breaks too easily it means that you have to knead it a little more. If the dough is too hard to stretch, and when you finally manage to stretch it breaks, it means that you’ve over kneaded and you need to start all over. And here is a video showing how you can do this test: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgEeHKTyowo 7. Rising Temperature and Time The dough can rise at almost any temperature, but the rate at which it will rise will drastically differ based on the temperature. On average a brioche dough should be left to rest for at least 90 minutes at room temperature, between 68°F and 74°F (20°C and 23°C). But this is just the average, and the time can increase or decrease depending on how much dough you have, what flour you’ve used, what is the hydration level, and of course the temperature of the room. Due to all of those factors, it can be really hard to say an exact time, but on average 90 minutes should be enough. But there are two simple ways to figure out if your dough has spent enough time rising, or if you need to let it rest some more. Those two methods are called the poke test and the float test. Poke Test This is extremely simple, you just have to slightly poke your dough and see how it reacts. If the dough bounces back quickly it still needs some more time to rest. If the dough slowly gets back to its original shape, then it rests for long enough, and it’s time to use it to make some brioche. If the dough doesn’t get back to its original shape, it means that it spent too much time resting, which is not ideal, but you can still make some good brioche with it. Float Test Fill a glass with water and take a small piece of your dough and gently put it in the glass. If the dough floats, it means that it has risen for enough time and you can use it for baking. If the dough floats, it means that you either have to let it rise for a little longer or that it has risen for too long. The float test is probably the simplest and most exact test, but unfortunately, it can’t tell you what is wrong with your dough. How to Fix a Dough That Didn’t Rise So those are the 7 possible things that could stop your brioche dough from rising. Now let’s see how you can fix them. Rising Temperature The first thing that I would recommend you to do is to move it somewhere warmer. There is a good chance that your dough is perfectly fine, but the temperature of the room is slowing it down. Kneading If that doesn't work, you should take a piece of the dough and do the windowpane test. If that doesn't work you should take the dough out of the bowl and knead it some more. If you didn’t knead the dough properly from the start this should fix that problem. Just make sure to use the windowpane test to know when to stop. Yeast If the elasticity of the dough isn’t the problem then you should see if the yeast was good. Take a teaspoon of yeast, and one of the sugar and mix them together with some warm water. If after 15 minutes there is no foam or any type of bubble then the yeast was most likely bad. At this point, you have two options, but both of them require you to get some new yeast. The first option is to mix the new yeast with some water and then mix that water with the dough that you have. After you mix everything together add some flour until you reach the right consistency. The yeast that you used previously won’t affect the new one at all. The second option is to start from scratch. And this is what I would recommend you to do. Using the previous method won’t save you any time, and it will most likely mess up the proportions of the recipe. Water If you believe that the water that you used was too hot, then you can either mix in some new yeast, or make a new dough. Can I Still Use the Dough if It Didn’t Rise? A dough that didn’t rise is not a bad or unhealthy dough, so yes you can still use it. But, don’t expect your brioche to have the same taste or texture. A brioche made with unrisen dough is not necessarily bad, but it’s very different. Some people might like it, some might not. Final Thoughts At the end of the article I will live you with a short recap of the things we discussed in the article: Test your yeast before using it, you can do this by mixing a teaspoon of yeast, with one teaspoon of sugar in a glass with water, if there are no bubbles after 15 minutes, the yeast is bad. Activate your yeast before using it, you can do this by dissolving it in water. The temperature of the water wouldn't be higher than 120°F (50°C), ideally, you want the temperature to be around 100°F (38°C) Don’t mix salt and yeast, mix the yeast with water, and the salt with the flour, then you can mix them all together Use All-Purpose Flour (also known as 00 flour) Knead your dough until it can pass the windowpane test On average a brioche dough should be left to rest for at least 90 minutes at room temperature, between 68°F and 74°F (20°C and 23°C).