It may be because of the type of yeast being used. Quick-cooking bread machines (1 hour cycle) typically requires "instant" yeast which rises much faster. Standard-cooking bread machines (2-3 hour cycle) need regular yeast, which is active longer. It sounds like you're using instant yeast in a standard recipe; thus the yeast stops working before the bread machine gets to the second rise cycle. Under-cooking may be because the resultant dough is denser than the machine expects, thus doesn't heat through in time.
Unfortunately the trade names for "Regular Active Dry" yeast and "Instant Dry" yeast can be very confusing.
Bread hydration varies widely. The "standard" bread using all-purpose (plain) flour has a ratio of water to flour weight (hydration) 60-65%. Flour with a higher protein level, labelled as bread, strong, or high-gluten, tend to use 65% hydration. Ciabatta and rustic breads generally use more water than normal. The extra water gives them more large, uneven holes in the interior of the bread (called the crumb), and generally leads to a higher-rising bread. These wetter doughs are often referred to as "slack" doughs in baker's parlance.
Here are a couple sample hydrations from Hammelman's bread baking:
- Baguettes with poolish, 66% hydration, all bread flour
- Ciabatta, 73% hydration, all bread flour
- Pain Rustique (rustic bread), 69% hydration, all bread flour
- Country Bread, 68% hydration, all bread flour
- Roasted Potato bread, 61% hydration, 85% bread flour / 15% whole wheat flour / 25% roasted potatoes
- Whole wheat bread, 68% hydration, 50/50 whole wheat and bread flour
- Semolina (Durum) bread, 62% hydration, 50/50 durum and bread flours
Mind you, it is quite possible to make a bread with even higher water content, if one is a skilled baker. Wetter breads (70% hydration and up) generally cannot be hand-kneaded normally, and require a mechanical mixer, stretch-and-fold kneading with a spatula, or autolysis. Autolysis is when you mix water and flour before adding yeast, and then allow it to sit. This allows enzymes in the flour to develop gluten before the rising begins, and can supplement or replace normal kneading.
Another approach, called double-hydration, is to add only part of the water before kneading. This allows you to knead the bread to develop gluten structure before it becomes too wet to knead.
For extremely wet breads, these methods may all be combined. I'm looking right now at a double-hydration, mechanically mixed, autolyzed, poolish-using ciabatta recipe that sits at 76% hydration.
Best Answer
Added malt is not necessary for yeast action.
The starches in flour are huge sugar molecules. They are too big for our tongue which is why we can't taste them. They are also too big for yeast to break down.
Given some time amylase enzymes in the flour will break some of those starches down into natural malt. This gives dough more complex flavors as well as a considerable amount of sugar for us and for our belching yeasty slaves. For this reason it is added to some flours by millers. Peter Reinhardt has made a career talking about this.
However, this malt, while delicious, is not always necessary. The flour milling process produces plenty of damaged starches that the yeast will happily munch on. For many breads this is entirely sufficient for proofing.
If your flour does not have much amylase and no added malt (which can also add enzymes) then your dough won't be breaking down any of your starches into new sugar. If you age your dough for a long time your yeast could simply be starving to death. You monster.
If you consider your constant quest for convenience to be corrupting the quality of your carbohydrate-consuming companions and curtailing the quantity of carbon-dioxide- an easy way to test this theory would be to mix in a little sucrose (table sugar). Your indentured yeast will love you and will honor your reign with gassy uprisings.