Bread dough with Dairy Whey?

[vintagemx0]

We just started messing-around with cheese making. While lurking around in some cheese forums, I read where someone was saying that the whey byproduct can be used for making bread dough.

Has anyone here ever heard of that? Or better still, has anyone here ever done that?

No doubt that dough can be made from it, but I wonder if it does anything besides adding protein and what it may do to the taste?

Ciao
The Morgans

[texassourdough]

Using whey in sourdough will almost certainly cause problems for the protease in the whey will attack the gluten - likely faster than the wild yeast can rise. You will want to use IDY (and maybe a bit extra) to give you fast rise times. That means the dough cannot develop much complexity unless you use preferments or presoaks to gain flavor. The resulting dough is likely to be weak and produce relatively soft loaves. You will probably want/need to use pans to make the bread and not freeform boules.

There are other complications. Depending on what cheese/process you are using the acidity of the whey may or may not be a problem for IDY. (Note: the acid does increase flavor.) Also, salt levels are important and bread is normally 1.8 to 2.0 % salt (based on flour weight). Higher levels slow the yeast significantly and can cause problems.

You can do it. But you will need to experiment. And the results may or may not be acceptable depending on many factors.

Good Luck!
Jay

[vintagemx0]

Thanks for the reply. It really doesn't sound like something I want to experiment with. I suppose if there was something really nice to come from it, we'd be hearing a lot more about it. I'll feed my garden with the stuff.

Ken