June 9, 2020 - 8:19pm
Not refrigerating dough before baking
Hi!
Like everyone, I usually refrigerate my sourdough at night before baking the next day. My question is:
is it ok to remove the Bread a few hours early to come to room temperature before baking? Wouldn’t that give me a more open crumb?
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I don't usually retard my dough.
Shortening the retard? Could. Try it and see. :)
Surely I will try!?
A lot of people bake straight out of the fridge. If you dont want to do that you can let it come back up to room temp; usually takes a couple hours.
Tnks so much!
Like Mini, I don't retard the final rise. I much prefer going the poolish route. I did it years ago, but frankly a preferment provides me more enzyme and gluten development and gives me a more flavorful result. The retarded rise then offers no improvement. My one exception is bagels.
If you want to shorten the refrigeration, by all means do so and see if you like the results.
g
But does it affect the air pockets and crumb?
I'll only comment on the difference between retarded final proof and a preferment. The controlling factors in alveoli size and distribution are the kneading and the pre-shaping and final shaping of the dough.
Otherwise, retarded dough tends to have a blistered crust. That's it. Retarding is one method, prefermenting is another method of modifying the flavor profile.
I always bake straight out of the fridge without any additional room-temp proof time on the counter. I get very nice oven spring with this method. If you do some searching on this site, you'll see lots of entries about this. The gas continues to build up in the loaf during the cold retard, you just won't see much of it. When the cold loaf hits the hot DO and oven, it causes those gasses to warm up and rise, creating a very nice open crumb (assuming build, shaping and scoring is done correctly). The other nice thing about this method is cold dough spreads less than warm when it is taken out of the banneton, and cold dough is easier to score than warm. It works for me anyway ;-)
Tnks so much! Will try doing both. Same dough divided and one in the refrigerator for retard and second one final proofing on bench at room temperature. Then will bake retard the next day..
Sounds like an interesting experiment! I hope you will report back in with photos and results!