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Is underproved bread dough an example of the Young–Laplace equation?

Physics Asked on May 26, 2021

I was watching minuteEarth’s video on Young-Laplace with regards to RDS in premature babies when I made the connection that bread dough, as a foam with many curved pockets of gas, would necessarily be influenced by this constraint.

When you don’t leave enough time for the bread to proof before baking, the yeast hasn’t finished fermenting. Thus, there ends up being a lot of fermentation gas created in the ~5 minutes after you put it into the oven. Characteristic of underproved bread is a set of very large holes in the upper portion of the bread, and a very dense bottom with very small holes. I assume that proving dough’s yeast’s gas production exerts constant positive pressure on all the cavities within the dough which would, by this law, minimize the Bernie Sander’s rant level of crumb inequality. When properly proved, a lot of gas is still made in the first moments in the oven, but less so from the yeast’s coup de pain.

And that’s what I want to know. Is that why underproved bread ends up bottom heavy? Or is it more related to gluten strength or some other factor? I suppose an answer that would be satisfactory more than a yes or no would include a quantification of this law’s influence on the underproved dough if possible and a source which attributes it. Or, a better place to ask this question.

I tried looking this answer up, but the closest I got was a matSci PhD thesis about sugar’s effect on dough that mentions YL a couple times. The other resources through google scholar are locked behind paywalls.

One Answer

I don't think it's right to say that Y-L does or does not cause underproving. Instead, we should view Y-L as one equation of many that govern the growth of bubbles in bread dough, but you are right to think that Y-L does effect the growth.

A model of the growth of bubbles in bread dough is given in this paper and Y-L is one part of it. I've got institutional access but I'm sure we can work out a way to share it if you're interested in reading it.

Answered by Nick on May 26, 2021

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