Temperature Queries
After a number of disappointing bakes I thought I would go back to basics and make a saturday white from Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast to try and console myself and focus on getting the right fermentation on a recipe I knew I could follow.
I decided to up the hydration to 78% (from 72 as specified in the recipe) and also use 10% wholemeal + adding 7% wheatgerm and bran (thought I would make use of the 'simple loaf' to experiment with a couple of extras).
30 min auto with water 34.5C
Dough temp after mix 27.8 (about 2C higher than recommended from FWSY)
4 folds within the first hour.
Dough temp after folds 25.8C.
It seemed to have roughly tripled in volume after just under 4 hours (potentially even 3:30-45), an hour quicker than expected.
Shaped after 4hr 15 (just to check that it was definitely tripled, I wanted a full fermentation)
RT proofed for 40 minutes (seemingly already overproofed, I only checked to make sure given that it was supposed to have between an hour and 1hr 15 mins).
Baked for 45 mins.
Checking afterwards, it seemed that the ambient temperature of the kitchen was 24C, 3C higher than is idealised in the recipe. This would presumably account for the higher dough temperature (along with using the upper end of specified temperature) and rapidly increased bulk and proof time. Is the higher hydration also an issue with faster fermentation? I'm assuming the 10% wholemeal wouldn't have made too much difference.
Is there a rule of thumb for accounting for these increases in temperature (assuming you're using the same flour content etc)? How can you effectively compensate?
Oddly, I also had another loaf I made at the same time which went into the fridge straight after shaping which also was over proofed after 1hr 30 minutes of retarded proof. This suggests that the dough was so warm that it couldn't be cooled down fast enough to actually retard the fermentation in time?
Any thoughts greatly appreciated,
Yours,
A frustrated baker!
Very nice write-up of your processes.
Something I have mentioned before, and a generally-assumed credo of bread bakers, is to watch the dough and not the clock. Folks like Forkish and Hamelman publish their formulas and process with very specific ingredients, times and temperatures. That is because if you follow these rules very specifically you should have the best chance of duplicating the bread they are baking.
The problem is that life, nature, the gods, and sometimes you yourself work against your success. Maybe the leavening you used today didn't have the same punch. Mother Nature decided to raise the temperature of your kitchen 3 degrees today. Fooling around on the computer made you miss that critical time point and delayed some part of the process half an hour. And, I decided to increase the hydration and add a different flour type this time.
I can assure you that Forkish and Hamelman have these same problems too. The difference between them and the likes of you and me is that they know how to read the dough and adapt accordingly. They can look, feel, and smell the unplanned change and modify the rest of the process in order to get a respectable product in the end. It might not be the exact product as detailed in the original formula. It could be a little off or it could be a little better.
I have spent the last year and a half trying to teach myself how to read the dough like a pro. I am getting better at it but I have a long way to go. To summarize my thoughts here, yes, little changes in your timing, temperatures and ingredients will affect the process. If you want to try and duplicate the exact same bread as Forkish or Hamelman, follow their exact formulas and processes.
As to the cold retard problem there are a couple of things working against you. First I never let a ferment go full term before I get it into the chiller. This time varies but I can provide some examples of my experiences. My baguettes might have a full term fermentation of 1.5 to 2 hours. If I plan to delay baking through the use of a cold bulk fermentation I might get the tub into the chiller after about an hour - maybe less. My Pain au Levain usually have a 4 hour bulk fermentation. I will go at least 3 - 3.5 hours before dividing and shaping then it is off to the chiller for a cold final proof. My sourdough pan loaf may have a full-term fermentation of 6 hours and I usually go the full-term before dividing and shaping. With this formula I will also plan a cold final proof.
The second issue is the cooling capacity of your chiller. Home refrigerators do a good job of keeping things cold and a rather poor job of making things cold. Because of this your fermentation will continue for a longer time since it takes longer to reduce the bulk temperature. Commercial chillers are designed to make things cold fast and keep them that way.
I hope this helps.
Jim
Thank you Jim for your response! What you say makes perfect sense, I do just need to practice and learn the dough. I think the main thing I was struggling with was that I learned all of these recipes and roughly what they should look/feel like in winter where the temperature was pretty consistent and then suddenly in the last two weeks the weather has shot up. Ambient temperature does seem to be very important, which is obviously frustrating given it is hard to control!
I made another forkish recipe the other day (80% biga), with the same ingredients and tried to account for everything and checked the dough frequently and, guess what, it worked much better! The biga was a little far gone, normally it takes 13hrs overnight whereas this time it was already too fermented after 9hrs. It's incredible how a final proof can sped up by 4 times just due to 3-4C increase in temperature! Although this would have also contributed to the dough temperature overall as well so I guess this would have sped things up..
Very interesting what you say about fridges, I will try to get them in earlier to allow them to actually cool. What I was surprised by was that after shaping and putting in the fridge straight away, it still was drastically overproofed. But what you say makes this make sense as it just wouldn't have cooled the dough down fast enough.
Many thanks again and I wish you all the best with your bakes!
P