You have made your dough, left it to rise and nothing has happened. Why is your dough not rising?
There are a number of things which might be happening.
Check your yeast is still in date
Your yeast might be past its best. Fresh yeast lasts about three weeks from manufacture if it is kept in the fridge. If it’s fresh it will feel malleable and soft, a bit like squishy play dough. You should be able to easily roll it into a ball. It will smell sweet. If it is crumbly and dry and smells sour then it’s past its best and needs to be thrown away. If your fresh yeast has been frozen and thawed before using then you might need to add a bit more than you usually would as it loses some of its potential to rise your bread when it’s been frozen.
In the case of using dried yeast ( dried active or easy bake/ fast action/ instant) then check the use by date on the container. Dried yeast degrades over time so don’t use it past its use by date. If it has been open for a few months and exposed to air then it will also have degraded. You can check whether your yeast is good to use by dissolving it in a small amount of warm water, with half a teaspoon of sugar added. If it froths up within ten minutes it is good to use. If it doesn’t froth up and only shows a few bubbles then it needs throwing away.
Yeast prefers warmth
Yeast prefers warm water. It will work faster if the water is warm (about 40, 104f) when you pour it in and mix your dough. If your dough is cold then the yeast’s activity will be slowed down. Sometimes this is exactly what you want to happen (take a look at my article ‘Will my bread dough rise in the fridge?“). However, if you are patiently (or impatiently) waiting for your dough to rise and it is cold then you might be waiting for longer than you expect. If you want to hurry things along, you could try putting the dough near to a warm radiator or your oven. Don’t put it too close to a heat source though as too much heat will kill the yeast. If you have plenty of time, then just give your dough a bit more time, it will catch up.
If you used hot water to mix your dough then that might have killed the yeast before it got a chance to get started. Yeast dies at 55C, 130f. So if your dough is too warm the yeast will have died.
Salt kills yeast. So if your salt came into direct contact with the yeast when you were measuring out the ingredients this will affect the rising power of the yeast. This is especially true if it was in contact for some time, for example in a bread machine. If you are using a bread machine then make sure you put in either the salt or yeast first, then the flour, then the other ingredient. This will ensure that they don’t come into contact before the machine starts mixing the dough.
The dough has dried out
If the dough has formed a dry skin on top then it won’t be able to continue to rise as it can’t push against the dry skin. You can prevent this by using plastic wrap or a shower cap on the top of your bowl or spraying a little oil over the dough before leaving to to ferment. If you use a proving cloth then wetting it to make it slightly damp can help the dough not form a skin. If you are putting the dough in the fridge for several hours then you will need to use a plastic covering or a larger bowl to sit over the top of the bowl or a dinner plate on top to create a tight seal.
Too much salt
If you have added too much salt then this will slow the yeast down and may even kill it. Be careful when adding salty ingredients such as Marmite and bacon and adjust your salt content a little. You can read more about the role of salt in bread at https://vegpatchkitchen.co.uk/the-role-of-salt-in-bread/
Too much sugar
A dough with lots of sugar will rise more slowly as the yeast draws water away from the yeast causing it to work more slowly. If your recipe has more than 10% sugar to the flour weight (e.g. more than 10g of sugar for every 100g of flour) then you will need to add a little more yeast to compensate or be prepared to wait longer for the dough to rise. If you make lots of sweet dough then you can buy osmotolerant yeast that has been made specially to cope with the additional sugar.
If the dough has egg, milk or butter added to it then you will need to add a little more yeast or be prepared to wait for a slower rise. The fat coats the yeast and slows down its activity. You can read more about this at https://vegpatchkitchen.co.uk/adding-fat-and-sugar-to-dough/
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Dough may not have been kneaded enough. Kneading 'exercises' the gluten in the bread and gives it the elasticity to hold in the air bubbles produced by the yeast. It is these air bubbles that cause the dough to expand and rise.
But almost as good as a proofing box is taking a Mason jar filled halfway up with water, microwaving it for two minutes, then putting your bowl of dough into the microwave with the jar to rise. The other thing you can do is place your lidded container or bowl of dough into a second, larger bowl of warm water.
When you add yeast to water and flour to create dough, it eats up the sugars in the flour and excretes carbon dioxide gas and ethanol — this process is called fermentation. The gluten in the dough traps the carbon dioxide gas, preventing it from escaping. The only place for it to go is up, and so the bread rises.
In a cooler preheated with a bowl of boiling water. This is a similar situation to a microwave oven, though not as convenient since there's no window through which to view the rising dough. Place a bowl of boiling water inside your closed cooler for several minutes.
If baked too soon or too late, loaves can collapse and have a dense, gummy center. “There are so many factors that affect rise time, so exact time will vary for every baker.
The big lesson here: too much of any ingredient can make your bread not rise—even flour. Too much flour can make your dough stiff and dry. And we all know what happens if there's not enough liquid for the yeast to use: It doesn't work how it should.
Instead, the range of which a dough can be properly kneaded is quite broad. It's possible to under-knead the mixture by a small amount, or over-knead it and still yield a delicious loaf of bread. Doughs usually flop when they are severely under or over-kneaded.
Most recipes call for the bread to double in size – this can take one to three hours, depending on the temperature, moisture in the dough, the development of the gluten, and the ingredients used. Generally speaking, a warm, humid environment is best for rising bread.
General amounts of yeast are around 1 - 2 % of the flour, by weight. Too much yeast could cause the dough to go flat by releasing gas before the flour is ready to expand.
The more sugar in yeast dough, the more slowly it will rise. Remember, sugar is hygroscopic. And in yeast dough, this means it can deprive yeast of the moisture it needs to grow.
Salt slows down fermentation and enzyme activity in dough. The salt crystals draw water away form their environment (salt is 'hygroscopic'). When salt and yeast compete for water, salt wins and the yeast is slowed down.
Keep the bread dough covered to protect the dough from drying out and keep off dust. Place your rising dough in a warm, draft-free place in the kitchen while it's rising. Too much heat will speed up the yeast activity, and too much cold air will slow it down.
Regardless of the type of yeast you use, if your water reaches temperatures of 120°F or more, the yeast will begin to die off. Once water temps reach 140°F or higher, that is the point where the yeast will be completely killed off.
If your kitchen and/or counter where you knead the dough is cool, the dough will cool down also (even if you used warm water to make it). If your dough is kept at around 80°F, it should take between 1 and 1½ hours to rise double in volume.
Gently press your finger into the dough on the top. If the dough springs back quickly, it's underproofed. If it springs back very slowly, it's properly proofed and ready to bake. Finally, if it never springs back, the dough is overproofed.
Dough rises as yeasts consume sugars. They can only do this at a certain temp range, otherwise they are inactive, or they are destroyed by too much heat. Putting the dough directly into the oven kills the yeast before it has has time to rise, which takes a few hours at least.
Introduction: My name is Nathanael Baumbach, I am a fantastic, nice, victorious, brave, healthy, cute, glorious person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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