April 25, 2010 - 7:22am
Bread Dough in Fridge
I'm fairly new to bread making and three days ago I made some roll dough with flour, water, sugar, salt, butter. I used my bread machine on dough cycle. After taking it out, I had a change of plans and placed it in fridge. Today I took it out and made rolls. Put them in the oven to rise like I always do, and they were beautiful. Placed them in oven to cook and first thing my husband said was "What are you doing with the vinegar, it stinks to high heaven". The dough DID smell like sourdough when I was making the rolls, is this normal?
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Hi southern grits girl,
yes, that's normal. Your dough started to ferment. It should have come out quite fluffy though. What you should or could have done is, to only use some of the "fridge-dough" and added it to a new badge, which would have given the batch a fuller flavour. A lot of people, including me and real bakers, ferment some yeast dough on purpose to get a fuller flavour into their breads/rolls.
All the Best from Ireland,
Wolfgang
Thanks Wolfgang!! At least I know what to do now. Next time I'll try that.
If you know it will be awhile or you're not sure try freezing your dough. I do it all the time with pizza dough and it turns out great. Take it out the day before you're going to bake and put it in the fridge to thaw. You may have to experiment a bit with rise times. Put it into a plastic container with a line on it so you can judge the volume of how high it rises in the fridge. That way you can figure out how much it has risen and if you'll need anytime on the countertop before baking. I suspect you'll be able to pull it out of the fridge after 12-24 hours, shape, rest for a bit and just bake.
Adding bits of the fermented dough to the next recipe is a wonderful idea too.
Thanks Doc!!! It never dawned on me that you could freeze dough. Thank you so much for the info, this site rocks!!!! Susan