I bake 2 loaves of country bread once a week always with slightly varying formulas and methods. This week I tried only feeding my levin once a day for the whole week and building up to the amount of levain I needed on bake day by feeding it twice before mixing into dough. Previously I had started feeding levain twice a day 3 days before bake and three times a day starting 2 days before. I tried this new method in order to minimize waist since I rarely use levain for other purposes and to go through flour less quickly. This week my bread came out very dense and cakey and I was wondering if this had anything to do with feeding levain less in lead up to bake, although there are other factors that could have lead to this result (such as 25% spelt and walnuts in dough, and doing all day autolyse in cold kitchen which I believe could have slowed down yeast production when levin was mixed in). Does anyone find that frequency of feeding leading up to day of bake drastically affect their loaf?
I have been baking from the Tartine Bread book for some time now with varying success. I am mostly playing around with bulk fermentation times and proofing times to see what the impact on the final product has. My most recent loaf had a pretty good uneven crumb but was still a little denser then what I want, and did not have the desired oven spring. Before hand I had been putting huge emphasis on the correct amount of bulk fermentation time and I think I have gotten that down pretty good. Now I believe I have to be focusing on the final rise time which I have not been doing because I have not seen any visual difference in the dough from before and after the final rise in the refrigerator, thinking that the final rise stage was just to develop flavor. I have just read about using the finger dent test to see if the dough is proofed enough so I think in my next loaf I will do most everything the same as in my last one but pay a lot more attention to the proofing stage. My last loaf went through 5.5 hrs of bulk fermentation at an average temperature in the low 70s, and a final rise in the fridge 9 hrs.
My two main questions are, should I see a visible rise in my dough when I take it out of the refrigerator? And what is the difference in a loaf of bread that has been under bulk fermented vs under proofed?
