Slow/No Rise method
I just finished the first few chapters of My Bread by Jim Lahey and my very first loaf of bread ever is sitting in the oven about halfway done. The problem is that I made two batches last night and while the first one finally seemed to come around at about 8:30 tonight both were rising for almost 24 hours (the better one was actually more like 26). In general this seems to be my plague with cooking/baking in that anything that is expected to take time always seems to take twice as long when I do it. In any case I have a feeling that the issue was temprature. I am in the northeast and it has been cold and thermostat was in the low 60s last night when the rise began. I did crank the heat up to 70 today but it still took a long time. Do you think the temperature is the issue? I was also wondering if maybe it was the amount of yeast as the recipe only calls for 1/4 teaspoon. Maybe the small amount of yeast exaggerates the effect of the temprature? Any advice would be helpful. Mostly I just want to try and ensure I am not doing anything wrong.
Thank You