Tips on retarding?
I've had my first attempt at retarding recently, and it was a little lackluster. Less than the usual oven spring, predictably a denser crumb, and the crust was oddly less crisp. The flavor was good, though. I'm guessing I simply didn't let it warm up long enough, but I don't know.
My loaves are about 20 ounces, white with ~10% rye. It generally proofs for about 5 hours altogether, half hour autolyse, and 3-4 stretch and folds before final shaping. My method was the same here, however after autolysing and allowing an hour to get going and a bit of folding, I put it in the fridge for about 16 hours. After that, it spent about 2 hours at room temperature before the final shaping, then proofing for an hour and a half. It felt basically normal temperature-wise at that point, though I noticed the dough felt tenser than usual.
Would a loaf of this size need more time to adequatly heat up? I believe I've heard of people baking loaves right out of the fridge with good results though, so I don't know what I've done really.
Ideas?