Hi! Long time lurker and occasional responder, but I've been spending a lot of time lately on the forums trying to really nail down my sometimes haphazard technique. I've been using baguettes as my practice bread to really kick my butt, and they've improved a lot with different tweaks and techniques (I can share more info if anyone's interested).
Hello!
I operate a small bakery that supplies several restaurants/bars with bread. I typically retard the final rise overnight in a commercial refrigerator that sits around 40-41F. However, said unit kicked it yesterday. As a temporary solution I do have a wine cooler that sits at 50-51F. I am hoping to use the wine cooler (so that I don't have to cart all of this shaped dough home with me), but fear I will compromise my product.
I've actually had 2 whole wheat breads since my last bread baking post. The "baguettes" were not particularly pretty, but they tasted fine (especially when used as pizza). see: http://pojosbreadblog.blogspot.com/
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
I have been making a few of Hamelman's sourdoughs. I notice that on several of these, he includes an option to retard for 8-18 hours, but not for the Pain Au Levain (5% rye) on page 158. Does anyone know why not? This is not a theoretical question. I would like to bring a couple loaves of this for a visit, and the timing works much better if I can retard overnight, and bake in the morning. Thanks. -Varda
