Proofing over a long period of time

Submitted by SourFlour on September 2, 2009 - 9:29am

Proofing over a long period of time

Does anyone have experience with proofing your loaves for long periods of time? Unless I am using a refrigerator, most of my loaves will be properly proofed in 2-5 hours. However, I am trying to figure out a way to ferment during the daytime, shape right before going to bed, and then bake them in the morning (8-10 hours).

I imagine the way to do this is to use very small amounts of starter, or a not so active starter. The one bread I have been successful at so far has been bagels. I am currently using a 20hr 4:4:5 125% hydrated starter as 5% of my dough, and am getting just about proper proofing in a cool room over night. But I would also like to apply this technique to ciabatta or baguettes.

Any advice?

Thanks,
Danny - Sour Flour
http://www.sourflour.org

Filed under:

Artisan Baking

Submitted by abracapocus on September 2, 2009 - 10:47am.

this timing works for me...

i've been partial to the vermont sourdough recipe in hamelman's bread because the timing works out well for weekend baking for me.

this is off the top of my head so don't take this as exact. but it goes something like this:

make sponge friday night
mix up dough, do folds, shape & put in proofing baskets saturday morning. takes a few hours with fiddling every so often. usually done by noon, but i get up early.
proofing baskets go in fridge overnight
bake off first thing sunday morning

don't know if that helps, but that's what i do.

Submitted by Nim on September 2, 2009 - 11:14am.

How much time do you need

How much time do you need outside the refrigeator in the morning before you can bake it off? I have had a couple of bad experiences when I baked the cold shaped loaves right away.

Submitted by caseymcm on September 2, 2009 - 2:55pm.

Me too, me too!

I have two loaves of Hamelman Pain Au Levain with whole wheat retarding at home as I type. I shaped them and left them for 30 min in the baskets at room temp before they went into the fridge.

I'm on the reverse baking schedule as abracapocus since I mostly bake during the week in the evenings when the little kids are asleep:

feed starter before going to bed

mix up the sponge/levain in the morning

come home from work and start the autolyze, mix and fold during bulk fermantation over the course of the evening

shape and retard before going to bed

the next evening, bake

I carefully read the text about proofing/final-fermantation and retarding and the best I could gleam was basically: if it's warm, you may need no time at room temp before the fridge, if it's cool you may need an hour at room temp first; so I split the difference with 30 minutes. I was a little disappointed this morning to see that they didn't do much size-wise overnight, hopefully they'll be a little more risen by tonight.

I'm wondering if I should let them warm up a bit before baking, not so that they're warm, but just so that they've got enough loft.

Submitted by abracapocus on September 5, 2009 - 6:11am.

time out of fridge

i pull mine out of the fridge and let it sit while i'm waiting for the oven to heat up. so maybe 20-30 min. it seems to only rise about 50% in the fridge, but gets good oven spring. here's the last one i baked off:

Submitted by Davo on September 2, 2009 - 4:03pm.

Danny,My method for SD

Danny,

My method for SD baking during a working week is (roughly) this, which seems much the same as Casey's:

(Assumes I have Wed night and Thurs night free, after work.)

Tues morning, pull starter from fridge, feed. Tues night, feed again.

Wed morning, make levain (for me, for four big loaves (800-850 g), I make a stiff/dry mix: ~150-200 g starter which is about 80% hydration, 360 g water, 550 g flour (usually 10-20% wmeal rye, 80-90% unbleached white bakers flour)). Leave on bench or in a hot summer - take to work so it doesn't overheat.

Wed night - mix up bread dough. Recover 150 g or so starter from the levain, then mix in 1400 g flour (rye/white mix), approx 970 g water (give or take dep on humidity etc), about 45 g salt. I mix it all in and let it rest 15 mins. It's not a true autolyse, but it is a whole lot easier than kneading straight up. Short kneads by french fold like a minute long at 10 min intervals for about 3/4 times, then let start fermenting. By now it's 40-50 mins after mixing, so I've only got about 2 hrs or so to loaf shaping. First fold after that I do as a few french folds, then the next typically two lots of folding are standard folds.

Scale, rest 10 mins then shape and put in bannetons, then into loosely tied plastic bags and straight into fridge. So by now it's about 10.30 Wed night. I find it's best if the bulk ferment has not gone too far by now - I really don't want the dough to have risen much yet, as I will bake Thursday night, and a fair bit will happen in the fridge. If I was getting up Thurs morning to bake, I'd give the bulk ferment another probably hour, before shape and fridge.

Thursday night after work, I put on the oven to warm, pull out loaves from fridge and de-bag. Usually they are about right after an hour while the oven warms (I can bake 2 at a time in a 900 mm wide oven, so take them out in pairs). Always check by poke test.

If baking Thurs morning before work, I would take them out and give a tad more than an hour out or fridge, I reckon, although maybe not if you gvae them that extra bulk ferment time the night before.

Casey, don't obssess too much about rise in the fridge - usually I find that early in t he morning they are only a little bigger than when put in the night before, and they usually gain a little during the day. Then if they get that hour out before baking, they get a little more size again. But remember you want th biggest overall rise including oven-spring. If they expand impressively in the baskets before they make the oven, fair chance they will flop a bit once in there!

Submitted by caseymcm on September 2, 2009 - 4:54pm.

fridge freakout

Davo,

Thanks for the thorough description of your process.

I guess I was expecting more activity by morning because every week I retard yeasted pizza dough overnight and by morning it's always pretty ballooned up. Being that this is sourdough it makes sense that the activity would be much more delayed. After going through the archives a bit I've decided that when I get home from work, I'll take both loaves out of the fridge and start the oven heating. The first loaf will go in at one hour, and the second will go in when the first is done, about 1:45. I'm interested to see how much difference there might be.

I'm curious, you don't find that the dough dries-out/skins-over in that hour it is resting out of the bag?

Submitted by caseymcm on September 3, 2009 - 11:53am.

it seemed to work out

So after an hour my two loaves didn't seem quite proofed enough by the poke test. I ended up getting busy and just put them both in at about 1 hour 45 minutes. The batard warmed up faster than the round loaf so it had a bit more oven spring, but both turned out pretty well. The dough was light in color throughout the process and during most of the bake, and when I checked at about 40 minutes they were much darker so I quickly pulled them both out to cool. In retrospect I could have left them in for a few more minutes to get a little more color out of them. I have another two loaves that will be ready to bake tonight so I'll keep a closer eye on them at the end of the bake.

Crust was decent and had those nice tiny bubbles associated with retarding (retardation?), crispy but a little thinner than I had hoped. Crumb was pretty nice, very open with lots of moderate sized holes and a few larger ones. If the next loaves come out well, I'll try to takes some pics.

I've only started utilizing real stretch and fold recently using JH's Bread. I was so impressed with the gluten development that resulted on the first two loaves that I kind of skimped on the initial hand kneading of the second two loaves. It turned out that after the two perscribed SAF's at 50 min intervals the dough was still kind of weak, so I did an additional round at the expected end of bulk fermentation and let it rest for 30 min before dividing shaping and popping in the fridge.

I'm excited about how I can fit stretch and fold and dough retarding into my routine. With little kids it's easier to snatch a few minutes here and there to do a quick SAF than to devote a long period to hand kneading, eventually the kids start to get rather kneady. And only having a few minutes in the morning plus evenings after work/dinner, breaking up the process across several days by retarding the dough will help fit into my schedule. I'm curious to see how much PR emphasizes these techniques in his upcoming book "Artisan Breads Every Day."

Submitted by JIP on September 3, 2009 - 10:22am.

I proof (technically retard)

I proof (technically retard) shaped loaves overnight in the fridge for up to 15 hours. This is the time that is suggested in Nancy Sileverton's book. In the morning I will take one loaf out for an hour and after the hour I will turn on the oven and take the other one out. After the second hour I will put in the first loaf bake it off and then let the second proof for an additional hour and bake that one off. With this I can bake both loaves seperately and not have on e warm up too much.

Submitted by caseymcm on September 4, 2009 - 11:51am.

I think I'm figuring this out

I pulled out the boule from the fridge and started the oven, then pulled out the batard 15 mins later, I believe total room temp time was 1:30 and 1:15 respectively.

Here are some poor camera phone shots of last nights bake of Pain au Levain w/whole-wheat from Hamelman's Bread: