The Fresh Loaf

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Combining bread and work

Sander's picture
Sander

Combining bread and work

Hi everyone,

 

I'm a keen baker and I've been trying to respect proofing times to the letter as prescribed in books and online recipes. I do work full time, however, which is often hard to combine with fermentation times if you want to go to bed at a decent time. :-)

 

As I'm out of the house for 12 hours I tend to take my starter with me to make the levain over lunch on a Friday.

I'm now thinking about breaking the bulk ferment up into smaller bits by putting the dough in the fridge after two hours, and continuing the ferment the next day and even a third day if needed.

 

Has anyone tried this before or come up with a better way of doing things?

 

Thanks in advance.

 

Cheers,

Sander

Lechem's picture
Lechem (not verified)

Make the timings fit your own schedule by retarding the dough in the fridge.

That's the gist of it. To fine tune it one would need to know the recipe from starter build to final dough and how much time you have to spend on it.

AlanG's picture
AlanG

I do the starter build the night before.  Next morning it take 3 hours to mix and do the necessary stretch and folds.  Dough goes into the refrigerator until the next morning.  then it is roughly shaped and allowed to rest on the counter of 45 minutes to one hour; shaped and placed on a folded linen couche for 30 minutes and then into the oven for a combined 30 minutes with and without steam which is 2 hours the next day.

 

namrac's picture
namrac

Day 1 9am : mix leaven

Day 1 7pm : mix bread dough -> autolyse -> add salt+water -> stretch and fold for the next 3 hrs in oven with breadproof setting

Day 1 11pm : divide -> bench rest -> final fold and goes into bennetons and cold final fermentation

Day 2 7pm : baked in oven 

I am still experimenting with fridge bulk (I like the results better) but this way I can do my normal 8hr work day and still bake some decent sourdough :)

 

Sander's picture
Sander

Thanks for the replies everyone,

I'm glad to hear more of you have tried and succeeded.

I'm going to try retarding before shaping as you suggest Alan. I've been working like Namrac but 11pm is past my bedtime on a school night :-)

I'll try to put up a detailed recipe and schedule soon for everyone to.

 

Cheers,

Sander

IceDemeter's picture
IceDemeter

... but I thought that you might find the timing schedule linked to here to be helpful in creating a schedule that works well for you: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/5381/sourdough-rise-time-table

As you figure out the timing that would be most convenient for you, please keep in mind that it might be possible to create an ideal temperature in between full refrigerator retard (at 38 or 39 degrees F) and your current ambient temperature.  Using a simple camping cooler as insulation, and varying whether you include 1 or 2 or 3 ice-packs (and varying the placement) can bring the speed of fermentation and yeast growth down to what will work best for you.

Hope this helps, and that you can get to enjoy baking  while still sleeping and working!

Sander's picture
Sander

Hi everyone,

 

Thanks for sharing your ideas here. I am going to experiment with in between fridge stages and see how I go. I also have another fridge spare here with a temp controller for cheese making, my cheese stuff hasn't been shipped yet, might be an option for now.

I had a whole morning to work with dough today so I set up a little ice bath last night to slow down my levain.

It worked a treat, even a bit too good. The levain looked very under-ripe but as I was keen to get started I did the float test and all was good.

- I mixed 450g levain, 1300g water, 1kg white flour, 800g wholemeal flour, 200g rye flour

- 90' autolyse

- added 100g water, 40g salt.

- Kneaded, slapped, folded and all of that for about 5'

- I did 4 sets of stretches with 30' interval

- 1h rest

- 30' bench rest

- shaping + baking two loaves

the rest is in the fridge for tomorrow.

 

I've added some pictures too.

 

One question though: I often get an open crumb, as you can see with this one. At the edges near the crust it often gets a fair bit denser though and sometimes a bit too much, Any thoughts on this?

 

Cheers