Reformulating recipes to eliminate bulk retarding
I'm not sure if I phrased my subject the right way. I have gone from hobby baker to home based market baker rather quickly. I got a great deal on a hobart retarder, but haven't figured out how to get it into our house yet.....
In the meantime, production has grown and now my batches of starter are larger than my batches of dough were at the beginning of the year. Most of the formulas I use are adapted from.... Well it's a book by a popular author that is targeted at making real bread easy and frequent....Ya, that one. I've modified most of the recipes I use from the book and even have a few of my own that I'm pretty happy with.
I haven't modified any of the recipes to the point of eliminating the final fermentation being long and cold, but until i can install an 8' high front door to move the retarder in, i just don't have enough room for all the dough to go in the fridge(s) overnight.
Right now I'm working on changing the yeasted multigrain to a biga and soaker combo and not slowing down the final batch ferment. I have the earlier versions of the recipes in "C and C", but one is yeasted and the other is 'au levain' and neither tastes quite like the later recipe.
Opinions, practical or otherwise, in general or specific to the struan recipe?
I can't tell from your description whether you want to be able to proof overnight for scheduling reasons or just get approximately the same bread while proofing without refrigeration.
If you have enough refrigeration capacity to chill the dough but not enough refrigerated volume to hold it in the cooler until time to bake, then you might consider over-chilling the dough in batches that you can accomodate and then letting everything sit together on a foam sheet while putting a second layer of foam over it (with appropriate support and side/end closures). The dough will stay cool for 4- 8 hrs depending on the exact conditions. Remember that it is mostly the average temperature that matters (not exactly, but close enough) when calculating the retard time.
I have been proofing overnight and like the flavor, but don't have the space. Even bulk chilling and then keeping cool with the foam is a bit much. I'll probably do 3 dozen+ loaves of struan for saturday. At 8 loaves a bucket and 4 buckets a fridge, and 6 other kinds of bread, overnight proofing is just taking up too much space.