Identical Twins? Not!
Below are two loaves of bread baked from the same batch of sourdough. The only difference between the two loaves is when each was baked. The recipe suggested to ferment the dough refrigerated overnight and bake directly from the fridge the next morning. After taking the loaves out of the fridge first thing this morning, I preheated the oven, which took about 15 minutes, slashed the first loaf (the loaf on the top) and put it in. Meanwhile, the second loaf rested at room temperature during the 25 minutes baking time, and an additional 5 minutes to allow the oven to rebound to 475 degrees; a total of approximately 30-35 minutes. The difference is astounding! This is not the first time I have baked directly from the fridge, but I have never had another loaf to compare side by side. I have taught myself a valuable lesson, and will always let the loaves rest from the fridge for at least an hour before baking them. Any thoughts?
Two thoughts:
First, I agree that you should allow the loaf to recover from the fridged temperatures of the cold storage before loading into the oven.
Second, you preheated the oven for 15 minutes before loading the first loaf. That means that the oven walls had not heated enough to maintain an even and consistent level of heat so your second loaf, which had the advantage of both the pre-warmup period and the more consistent oven temperature benefited.
Funny how you think of things while you're doing them, and you know there will be consequences, but you do them anyway. I generally preheat the oven with the stone for a much longer period of time (turn the oven on, have my coffee, read the paper, have breakfast, load the bread ), but was in a hurry this morning so I did kind of rush things. So, I have learned two lessons today. Thanks for the insight!
When my wife allows me to use the kitchen she will sometimes walk through and give me a curious look. If I ask (and I always do) about her curiosity she asks "why are you xyz with that xxx?" I am thus reminded that I either missed an important step or added an unncecssary step to whatever I'm cooking or baking or that I'm using twice the number of vessels than the average cook/baker to prepare my dish. It's nice to have someone looking at an issue from a different perspective.
P. Reinhart teaches (at least in his works that I've read) to allow the loaf to rest about 3 hours after removing it from the fridge. I sometimes cheat with a two hour warm up period; don't tell PR.
it is always best to let the meat warm to room temperature before putting in the oven and the 20 minutes per pound rule doesn't work for small roasts. I can put loaf pan bread into a cold oven and bake for 45 minutes and it comes out fine but the next batch is baked for 40 minutes