Wayne Gisslen

Steps in Yeast Dough Production: Bulk Fermentation

Appears in
Professional Cooking: 10th Edition
Professional Cooking

By Wayne Gisslen

Published 2025

  • About

Fermentation is the process by which yeast acts on the sugars and starches in the dough to produce carbon dioxide gas and alcohol.

Gluten becomes smoother and more elastic during fermentation. An underfermented dough does not develop proper volume, and the texture will be coarse. A dough that ferments too long or at too high a temperature becomes sticky, hard to work, and slightly sour.

An underfermented dough is called a young dough. An overfermented dough is called an old dough.

Doughs with weak gluten, such as rye doughs and rich doughs, are usually underfermented or “taken to the bench young.”