October 24, 2017 - 7:50am
Shaping before bulk ferment
I have successfull recipes that I am trying to tweak to fit a new schedule.
Has anyone tried shaping immediately after the stretch and folds? I would do 4 s&f at 30 min intervals. Then I would divide the dough, shape it into bannetons, ferment/prove overnight (the duration of this step would be the equivalent of the bf in the original recipe). The next morning I would bake it.
This is instead of doing s&f, bf overnight, shape, prove, bake. I am trying to avoid spending the time of proving the bread after shaping, before baking in the morning.
Final proving in a fridge is not an option...
What happens to the texture taste and appearance of the final loaf? Has anyone played around with this?
Let me know if this is not clear, thanks everyone!
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4 stretch and folds 30 minutes apart. That's two hours of bulk ferment.
Find a starter/levain % to suit 2 hours of bulk ferment. Then carry on exactly as you have described. Shape and final proof in the fridge.
If you can stretch it to 3 hours then this recipe would suit you. After shaping into your banneton place it straight into the fridge and bake when ready.
http://www.weekendbakery.com/posts/sourdough-pain-naturel/
If not, I'm sure we can find/tweak a recipe to suit your schedule.
in sourdough bread, maybe if you don't have the time it might work better to have hybrid recipe with commercial yeast doing the heavy lifting and a sourdough culture to help with the flavour.
Gerhard
Thanks, but I have recipes...and as stated proving in the fridge is NOT an option, which is why I am seeking advice. I want to use my recipe, which requires overnight cool room temp fermenting. My main concerns are if it ferments after being shaped, will this result in too large of gas pockets when baked, and also, will there no longer be any surface tension on the dough and will it spread too much when transferred into the baking stone. If anyone has played with this I would appreciate your input...
You still incorporate a bulk ferment and final proof though. You don't skip the bulk ferment as you're already doing one. This is when you're employing the stretch and folds. Simply find the starter amount that works for your bulk ferment timing then shape and final proof in the fridge.
that it would be possible to shape the dough without it being already at a certain degree of fermentation. Even if some kind of shape were achieved, I would think that the overnight room temp continued fermentation would break down the integrity of the outer skin and necessitate at least a re-shaping to balance out the gasses in the dough, and a short final proof to establish the shape for oven-spring.
With that said, perhaps using loaf tins might get rid of the need for the dough to hold any type of shape... ??
So - no access to a refrigerator for any portion of the fermentation or proof, so everything needs to be done at "cool" room temperature. What exactly is your idea of "cool" room temperature? If it is down in the 55-60 deg F range, then you could possibly set up your recipe to work over a 20-32 hour sort of time frame, with the bulk ferment being about 12-20 hours and the shaped proof being 7-12 hours (check out the sourdough rise time table here: http://www.wraithnj.com/breadpics/rise_time_table/bread_model_bwraith.htm).
If your "cool" room temperature is higher than that, then it might not be possible to figure out a way to do it. The lack of fridge access really does make it tricky, so I'm wondering if you might be able to at least put the proofing loaf in to something like a cooler with an ice-pack to keep the temps down just low enough overnight to allow you to get more than 5 hours of sleep before the bake...
Hopefully the timetable will give you some ideas on what you can try.
If your schedule allows, the best would be to bulk ferment overnight and shape like 1.5 to 2 hours before baking. I went through this process just now. Prepared levain in the morning prior to baking (took 10 hrs to mature rye levain), mixed at night, applied 3 stretch and folds, bulk fermented overnight at room temperature (around 22C), shaped at 5:30am and baked at 7:15 am. Result is attached below for a 50% mixed all-purpose flour + 50% rye loaf at about 72% overall hydration.
Are your nighttime temps such that you can place the loaf outside(-ish), like in a garage or shed overnight? Our nighttime lows just happen to be in the mid- to high 40s (F) right now, so my latest attempt spent the night in our unheated sunroom.