Hi there

I have a question about my baking escapades from the last couple of days.

Sat night: made pate fermentee / pre-ferment (Peter Reinhart's pre-ferment recipe from Crust and Crumb)

Sun night: made baguette dough (French bread II, with pate fermentee, from Crust and Crumb). Initial rising times (30 mins then 90 mins - though the dough rose crazy fast, so I did a little shorter).

Then - a bit of a mistake I realised later - instead of shaping loaves before refrigerating, I just left the dough in a bucket in the fridge overnight.

Monday: Dough had bulked up wonderfully. Shaped batards. Was a bit unhappy that they tightened up considerably from that bulked-up, expanded rise. (Next time will shape before overnight rise.) Baked one on Monday, one this morning (Tuesday), and wanting to bake the third tonight (also Tuesday).The crust and flavour was great, but crumb a little tight compared to what I think it would've been if I'd shaped the night before.

Anyway, my question is: Third loaf has been sitting in fridge since yesterday morning. Is it too long to leave a risen, shaped loaf in the fridge - from Mon morning til Tuesday night? What's the longest you would keep unbaked loaves in the fridge?

Thank you!

Lisa

Hello everyone, i am new to sourdough and want to attempt a sourdough version of Peter Reinharts Struan bread and would like your opinion on the method i came up with.

Recipe:

Soaker

• 198g Water
• 60g Hodgeson Mills Rye Flour
• 35g Arrowhead Mills Kamut Flour
• 45g Sunflower Seed Flour
• 40g Rolled Oats
• 56.5g King Arthur Whole Wheat Flour
• 8g Salt

Starter

• 32g Refreshed Whole Wheat Mother Starter
• 95g KA White Whole Wheat Flour
• 71g Water

Final Dough

• All of the Soaker and Starter
• 56.5g KA Whole Wheat Flour
• 110g KA White Whole Wheat Flour
• 88g Water
• 14g Walnut Oil
• 21g Molasses

Proposed Method

• Evening of Day 1: Assemble the soaker and place it in the fridge. Then assemble the starter and leave it out overnight to ripen.
• Morning of Day2: Combine the soaker with the starter and the rest of the flour and allow to autolyse for 20 minutes before adding the Oil and the Molasses. Then perform three series of stretch and folds at 20 minute intervals before placing the dough in the fridge for 24 hours.
• Morning of Day 3: Take the dough out of the fridge and shape it into a sandwich loaf and allow to properly proof before baking acoording to Reinharts instructions.

I would like to know if this sounds like a good method before i proceed because I would really like to not waste my ingredients.

This is my first blog post on TFL, although I've been lurking around for nearly a year now. I started getting in to sourdough baking in Spring (southern hemisphere) last year but my poor little starter went on hiatus when we took a couple of months overseas holiday at the beginning of this year. Now it's June and I'm only just reawakening Owen, my starter. Luckily, our housesitter indulged my detailed instructions on feeding Owen while we were away. (Although she said something along the lines of "if I had a baby whose nappy smelled as bad as that bread thingy, I wouldn't change it"...)

I decided I wanted to make some bread with a cold retardation -- this tends to fit with my schedule a bit better than trying to go through the whole process in one day. Because my baking results have been inconsistent, I am also hedging my bets by making a yeasted bread that fits almost the same schedule as the sourdough.

For my yeasted bread, I'm using the Baguettes a l'Ancienne posted by DonD a few weeks ago: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/17415/baguettes-l039ancienne-cold-retardation

For my sourdough, I'm using the Pierre Nury Rustic Light Rye posted by zolablue: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/5500/pierre-nury’s-rustic-light-rye-leader 

So I mixed up my flour mixture and levain last night. Hiccup one: when I got up this morning, my sourdough levain looked virtually unchanged. I'm not used to using a stiff starter, so maybe it's meant to look like a floury lump, but I wasn't convinced there was enough life in the levain to rise the bread. So I have divided that recipe in half, using half the stiff levain and half my usual wet starter, which I fed last night. 

Here's hoping that I get some success out of one of the three doughs currently fermenting on my counter!

EDIT: the next day

Gahhh! My sourdough has COMPLETELY flopped -- didn't rise at all except for a little half-hearted attempt during baking. I should have known the starter and levain weren't going to do the job, but gosh I wanted them to! Plus I think I got the gluten development thing right this time. 

I haven't baked the yeasted bread yet but I'm reallyreallyreally hoping I get at least one good loaf out of this three-day effort!

I just got my first banneton and i'm excited to get some nice rings on my bread. I was wondering, though, whether retarding in the fridge overnight will work in the banneton. it seems retarding the dough in a couche and putting it into the banneton later would defeat the purpose of the banneton.

After doing some serious experimentations with long room-temperature rises and enjoying them, I have concluded that I do like the flavor imparted from 8-12 fridge retardations. It just gets a twang-y zippy edge I don't necessarily get from non-fridged loaves. I do fear it creates a far-too-similar flavor profile in loaves, even ones with long pre-ferments, pate fermentees, or epoxys (or the combination of those).

Back to the point: I hear it suggested to proof loaves in the fridge in airtight containers. This is not practical for me, so I generally just throw the post bulk-fermented dough into the fridge (generally overnight). It comes out the next morning, and continues to grow throughout the day.

Getting the right proof level is tough. I worry that the loaves won't spring after this rigorous procedure, but they generally blow up. So I'm starting to think I might need:

8-12 hour fridge retardation

8-12 back to room temp (house is cold in winter, likely much shorter in other months)

1 hour proof? I need new linens so I've been slacking on proofs lately with noticable results but am not sure how I should do this with the loaves coming up from cold. How many hours do you guys generally proof on regular, unretarded loaves? I find my loaves are generally under-proofed as they are likely to blow up on oven-spring.

Your input requested.

On page 33 of Dan Leader's Local Breads, he says:

Some professional bakers retard whole grain bread and rye breads, but I wouldn't recommend this to home bakers?

Is whole wheat a whole grain bread?  If so, P. Reinhart in his latest book would definitely disagree with this.

Are there experienced people out there with a viewpoint on this?

I read of the importance of retardation often but am not clear on the parameters for same.  Rose Barenbaum in the bread bible says that 24 hours in the frigerator is too much and will kill the yeast, so, I guess that is the maximum limit but what amount of time is generally considered the best for a regular loaf of white bread, say with Floyd's recipe?  My guess is that there is a continuum of minimum, optimum, and too much.  Do most people omit this phase altogether and get on with life?  Rose Barenbaum  retards the starter the night before and then also the dough in the last sta