Hi everyone,

After my recent trip to Germany, and being just blown away by the piece of an amazingly sour miche I purchased at Soluna Brot und Oel in Berlin (see here for description and photos), I was inspired to try making an extra-sour miche like that one.

I think I came close.  In my previous efforts with trying to make my sour bread more sour (lower hydration starter), I tried Reinhart's idea of using a larger percentage of sour levain in the final dough.  So rather than the usual small amount of levain, I used just more than 40% levain in this dough.

The levain was 1020g (66% hydration) of a total of 2.445 kg dough  (170g starter, 510g flour and 340g water).

I also have had good results in coaxing complex flavors from my flour when making baguettes by using the cold-autolyse method: I put a bowl of flour in my freezer for about 1/2 hour, along with a large jug of spring water (just more than the recipe requires, since some freezes) and icecubes.  Mix the water and flour together and refrigerate overnight.  Since I was feeding the sourdough starter overnight, I decided to try this cold autolyse as well for the non-levain part of the flour.

Cold autolyse: 754g flour with 518g ice water (68% hydration).

final dough: all the levain and cold autolyze, plus 28g sea salt and 125g water.  Total dough weight of 2.45 kg at 70% hydration. 

Fermented for about 4 1/2 hours, with five S&Fs, one every half hour, at the beginning, then 2 hours undisturbed.

Shaped the whole loaf round with minimal degassing.  (I now think I should have bench rested it and shaped it again to further increase the surface tension.  It might have managed a bit more height and not almost run off my pizza stones if I had done so.)

I intended to increase the sourness by also retarding the loaf overnight.  But because of its size and the vigor of my sourdoufgh starter, after two hours in the fridge it was already looking dangerously close to over-proofed.  I don't think a 2.25 kg dough could cool quickly enough to retard the rising happening inside the dough.  So I chickened out; took it out of the fridge turned the oven on and baked it 3/4 hour later.

It turned out pretty good.  Caramelized crust (not uber-crunchy after cooling) with a cool creamy crumb that tastes both sweet and sour (at 18 hours after baking; I hope that will improve with time).

But still there is this ideal, even-more-sour version I had in mind, that the cold retardations could have produced.  

My question: Has anyone had success at cold-retarding large and vigorous loaves like this? Is this size the impediment to effective retardation, as I suspect it would be?

Here's how it turned out:

I proofed it in a large stainless steel bowl lined with my linen couche cloth.  It about 2/3 filled the bowl after shaping.

After 2 hours in the fridge, it had risen to about 1 3/4 the size it was after shaping (which was not fully degassed when I put it in the bowl to rise).  From the look of the surface at this stage, I figured that it was not going to slow down enough by being in the fridge, and it would be better to just bake it soon.

Just out of the oven.  This monster is about 16 inches in diameter; bigger than my pizza peel.  It just barely fit on the 20x16 inch pizza stone in my oven.

Crust is nicely caramelized and cracked in tha few places:

The crumb is translucent, and has nice holes.  None too cavernous, but large enough.

Lately I have been baking from Tartine Bread and it has been mostly hits with a few misses. Chad Roberston seems to contradict himself a few times and leave some things unclear. These are my questions/concerns:

1) Sometimes my loaves bake up seemingly baked through, but gummy, wet, and unpleasantly/excessively chewy on the inside. My loaves often experience a cold retardation for about 18 hours. Could this be because of increased enzyme activity over this period of time?

2) I was reading an article in Cooks Illustrated about New York style pizza, and the author claimed that a cold bulk fermentation would result in no CO2 pockets in the dough. Is this statement correct; I have been considering a cold bulk fermentation overnight (without stretch and folds) then shaping in the morning and either allowing to rise at room temp until fully proofed or allow to rise for an hour and then put it in the fridge until dinner (I KNOW! I'm not supposed to be eaten hot; but it's SO GOOD!) Might I also put it in the refridgerator to rise, still cold?

3) What about a cold, overnight autolyse. Or would this, again prove to initiate too much enzyme activity and perhaps use too much of the yeast's resources?

Thank you bread experts!

I am able to control the temperature of my sourdough loaves for overnight retarding and proofing and I wanted to get everyone's opinion of what you think the best temperature is and why. There has been a bunch of recent thoughts and discussion on this circulating in books and whatnot and I wanted to put this question out there to the masters.

Thanks!

Nick

Hi,

Hamelman suggests that retarding should take sometime between 12-16 hours depends on the temperture.

My question is the other way around: what is the minimal time for retarding dough.

Let's say that I've finished the bulk fermentation of a Vermont dough. It is midnight and I want to bake on 6AM in the morning.

The recipe calls for a 2-2.5 hours final fermentation but I have 6.

How can I use retarding? Can I use retarding at all?

Thanks a lot,

David

Hi Bakers,

My question is actually two questions.

I am baking a miche of 40% bread flour, 40% whole wheat and 20% rye, 70% overall hydration, 2% salt, 30% starter and 18% grains.

Starter is 100% hydration (same flours %).

I've baked hundreds loaves with this recipe and now the questions are:

1. Most recipes in Hamelman calls for about 15% starter. Only rye recipe contains up to 30%. what does it mean to have 30% starter in the recipe. What would happen if I change to 20%? (tried, did not see a big difference).

2. I am retarding the loaves occasionally to be able to use my schedule better. Hamelman is talking about retarding in 5-10C while a regular refrigirator is 3-5C. Now, my question is: if the recipe calls for 3 hours of final proofing, what whould be the corresponding time in a refrigirator? Is 6 hours enough? Hamelman is talking about up to 12 hour but what is the minimum? Can I use 1 hour of regular proofing (after 2.5 hours of bulk fermentation) then x hours in the regrigirator? What's the rate? Is there some kind of a rule?

Thanks a lot,

David

Hello-

I've been trying a few baguette methods that call for a retardation in the refrigerator, and what confuses me is that many people say they get a bit of a rise out of their dough while it's in there. I get nada. The dough comes out pretty much exactly as it went in. Which leads me to ask, what's the point of the cold retardation? If yeast activity slows to the point of pretty much total inaction, the process isn't doing me much good, is it? 

My fridge seems to be at 3.5 degrees Celsius. (That's 38.3F for you old-school types.) I like it that way as my milk never goes off. Is your fridge warmer? Is a professional baker's fridge warmer?

Thanks, I really do appreciate everyone's expertise on this site. 

Hey All,

Me again.  This whole baking and blogging thing is a little nutty...  It's something one of those things that's fun, tedious and addictive...  Anyway, let's get on with this post...  How long can you cold bulk retard a dough and still have some good bread?  I've done 24 hours with good and bad results.  How about longer?  Why cold bulk retarding vs cold retarded proofing?  Well, from my experience, cold retarded proofing in a linen lined banneton seems to dry out the surface of the dough, so after baking, the crust becomes thick and tough...  This is my experience.  Also, I have a small under the counter refrigerator that has enough room to bulk retard maybe 4kg of dough in 2 X 4L plastic tubs.  So bulk retardation is my only option short of not sleeping if you've been following my baking schedule these days...

Here's my recipe:

Liquid Levain:

150g White Whole Wheat Flour

50g Rye Flour

50g Liquid Sourdough Storage Starter (100% hydration)

200g Water

450g Total Liquid Levain

Final Dough:

1000g AP

616g Water

30g Kosher Salt

450g Liquid Levain

2096g Approx Total Dough Yield

9/14/10

8:15pm - Mix liquid levain, cover and let rest on counter overnight.

9/15/10

8:00am - Mix final dough (in large mixing bowl put in water first, then levain, flour, salt).  Mix with rubber spatula until shaggy dough forms.  Cover and let rest 20 minutes.

8:25am - Knead for few minutes with wet hands until relatively smooth dough forms, transfer to lightly oiled container at least 4L, cover and let rest.

8:45am - Turn dough in container (stretch and fold), cover, place into refrigerator (40F), go to work.

9/16/10

6:30pm - Come home and take the dough out of the refrigerator and find that it was working on escaping the container

Divide into 2 equal pieces, shape into boules and place into linen lined bannetons and proof for 3 hours.

8:40pm - Arrange 2 baking stones on 2 levels, put steam pan in oven, preheat to 500F with convection.

9:45pm - Take bannetons out of plastic bag, lightly flour and give poke test...

10:00pm - Turn off convection. 

Turn boule out onto a lightly floured peel, slash as desired and place into oven directly onto stone.  When last loaf is in, pour 1 1/2 cups water into steam pan, close oven door.  Turn oven down to 450F and bake for 50 minutes, rotating between stones half way.  Then turn off oven and leave loaves in for another 10 minutes.

Loaves are done when the internal temp reaches 205F or higher (210F preferred), and they weigh at least 15% lighter than their prebaked weight.  Mine were 1050g before baking, and around 870g after, which is about a 17% weight loss...

Cool completely before cutting and eating...  Crumbshots tomorrow morning...  I wonder it this is a less stressfull baking schedule...  You tell me...

Tim

I made my San Joaquin Sourdough today with a couple of modifications.

The last few bakes, I have substituted a liquid levain for the the firmer levain and also have used a higher percentage of levain, although, since I've used a liquid levain, the percentage of pre-fermented flour in the dough is actually lower. Also, note that, while the “final dough” hydration is 72%, the total dough hydration is actually closer to 78% because of the high-hydration levain. This is actually a somewhat higher hydration than my original formula for San Joaquin Sourdough.

The second modification was to cold retard the dough for a longer time – 36 hours as opposed to the 16-20 hours I have generally used. This was for my convenience, but I've also been curious about the effects of longer cold retardation on this dough.