February 13, 2019 - 12:42am
Retarding in Fridge Twice (Bulk & 2nd Proof)
Question for sourdough home bakers out there.
Due to a unique schedule and out of curiosity, wondering if anybody has had any luck with a method I'm trying out.
Retarding dough during bulk fermentation (~14 hours), bringing it back to temp for an hour. Pre-shaping, resting 30mins, shaping, and retarding once again in fridge for an additional 14 hours to then bake on final (3rd) day. Do you think dough will be over-proofed? Or do you think having two prolonged cold fermentation will give a more developed flavor?
Details on my bake:
82% white bread flour, 12% WW flour, 6% rye, 78% hydration. Had a longer autolyse @ 2hrs and liquid levain at 18% of flour weight.
Will follow up with how it goes!
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Conceptually, yes. We did this in a bakery I used to work at. Will this particular recipe work on the first try? That I can't say! You very well may have to play around with the formula and learn how the dough needs to feel at each stage to achieve your desired results. But that general outline of the process can certainly make some pretty tasty bread.
Hey Lyndon, this is an interesting concept. But when thinking about it’s implementation, time and temperature come to mind. Most refrigerators are set to about 38-39F. In my case a 12 hour BF and 12 hour proof seems ideal. If you were to attempt this and you had a retarder that would allow any temperature, what temp would you start testing at?
I’m thinking something like mix, autolyse and BF @ 7AM. Shape and proof for 8PM. Preheat oven @ 7AM and bake for 8.
I realize this would take some experimentation, but would like your opinion on a temperature estimate for the initial run. My understanding is there would be no (or very little) bench time.
Thanks
Dan
Well, I think there are a number of ways to approach this. The process we ran at the bakery was something like this: Somewhere around 1 in the afternoon the sourdough would be mixed and placed into 55 gallon food safe cans. This particular dough fairly low hydration, probably 58-60 with a strong flour. It would sit out for an hour or so before being placed in the walk in cooler. The next day we would pull it out of the cooler at 5 or 6 in the morning and allow it to sit out until around noon or so at which point we would cut and shape the bread. then the containers would get filled back with a fresh mix, rinse and repeat. Obviously our walk in would get the dough pretty cold and more or less stop fermentation and then we used the time at room tempt the next day to slowly ferment the dough. So our process was a little elongated as to what you were describing but it is a process that was designed to fit into the flow of the bakery. It was pretty flexible.
If you are attempting to get a low and slow fermentation where you can more or less pull the dough from the retarder and preshape you might try somewhere around 48-52 degree range. But you're certainly right in so much as it would just take a little experimentation and play to try to get the process figured out and made consistent. This isn't a process that I've attempted but I see no reason why it shouldn't work once the variables are figured out.
I had an arbitrary number of 50F in mind. The Levain fermenting now and hope to give this process a try.
There are two goals in mind here.
Danny