April 22, 2014 - 10:33pm
Trying to come up with a weekday sourdough schedule
I have been dabbling through recipes in Reinhart and Forkish. have a good sourdough culture going in the fridge but haven't mastered it yet. Reinhart refrigeration Technique allows weekday schedule but I have had mixed success getting it optimally proofed after shaping. Forkish recipes are good but he almost always has a midday step; I can only mix shape and bake at 7 am or after 6 pm. My kitchen is warm 77F. Does anyone have a multi day sourdough schedule I could try?
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You can check my post on 36hours onion sourdough
It should fit in your work schedule easily.
before you head to work you mix the levain and dough, put the dough in the fridge levain on counter.
When you finished work they should be ready, mix them together added salt, do 4-6 S&F depends on your dough. put it back into the fridge for 12-24 hours. On the next day, take it out of the fridge let it double (around 2hours) shape the dough and second proof (2 - 4 hours ) one more hour for baking. U can still go to bed before 12 hopefully.
Happy Baking
Cecilia
TylerDavis,
It will take some amount of knowledge of your starter's characteristics, but if you can mix a ratio of starter to new ingredients that will make for a 12 hour bulk ferment, then you can do that mixing in the morning or evening and shape, proof, bake 12 hours later. For instance, if I feed my starter a ratio of 1:2:2 for starter:flour:water, it will be at peak by 12 hours at my room temperature. So, if I make a dough that is dryer than 100% (usually around 60% to 65%), has salt, and contains slightly less inoculation than the 1:2:2 ratio, it will be ready to shape at about 12 hours, and still have enough rise left to proof and bake. With a little practice, you can learn which ingredients will do what to the bread, and use the starter/levain inoculation amount as your timing adjuster. Eventually, you will be able to make any SD bread fit your ideal timing.
OK maybe this weekend I will do a test run to see how long my starter takes to double in size. I haven't been watching it that closely.
My starter will be coming out of the fridge in a dormant state, not active as called for in many recipes. I give it a replacement feeding each time I bake, before putting it back in the fridge.
The 1:2:2 ratio - do you really use 50% starter? Most recipes say 10-20%. Are you building a levain from your starter in an earlier step? I am most familiar with using ~1TBSP starter to innoculate a levain, let the levain rise at room temp for 12 hrs, then add new flour water and salt, then second rise, then shape, proof, and bake.
The 1:2:2 ratio I mentioned is my "normal" feeding ratio for my starter, when I sometimes leave it out at room temperature. Most of the time, I keep it in the fridge. But, if you think about it, if that is what it takes to peak when fed as a starter, it should be similar for making dough, except for the changes brought on by the addition of other ingredients, or the lower hydration level. By the way, a ratio of 1:2:2 is actually 20% starter, 40% flour, 40% water by weight ratio (not bakers' percent).
I wanted to say, but had to run out earlier, that my house right now is about 70F or maybe a bit lower. During the summer months, it gets a little warmer in my house, despite A/C running almost constantly. My starter, if left at room temperature in the summer, can take a much smaller inoculation at feeding. There have been times that I've fed at a ratio of 1:10:10 and still saw it peak before 12 hours! That is probably closer to what you can expect in the upper 70's at your house. Salt slows down fermentation, as do a lower hydration and cooler temps. My real point was that whatever your basic feeding schedule is for your starter, it can be tweaked to work as a fermentation schedule for your dough as well. I've had to get really creative with my bread making because I rarely have even the few hours it takes to shape, proof, and bake all in one block of time, unless I stay up really late at night.
It depends on which type of bread you want to bake. But actually, you can bake any within just one day. Why use a multi day setting? As far as I know, all those multi-day-cold-fermentation settings are used to make the yeast at least produce a bit of flavour that was lost by not using sourdough anymore.
Here are 2 examples for one day settings that would perfectly fit your working days. And most types of bread are in between.
1-Step sourdoughs tend to have smaller bubbles but more (not very open crumb). I actually prefer them as I like thin slices. From the morning to the evening it es enough time to build the sourdough in one step at 77F. If you use 33% of the flour in the sourdough, (at a 100% hydration sourdough that means as much flour added to the final dough as sourdough), the proofing time after mixing will be less than 2 hours. Depending on how active your starter is you need different amounts of starter. At 77F, I'd use 10%.
0-Step (or "directly built") sourdoughs are also easily fermented in 11 to 12 hours (7am to 6pm). 0-steps means, you don't actually build the sourdough before using it in the final dough, but you add starter directly to the final dough and let it ferment including salt. The no-knead-bread-formula I often use would fit: 400g wheat flour, 300g water, 8g salt, 8g active starter. After about 11 hours, you can just do 2 to 4 strech and folds (4 - one in each direction) and then bake it as a ciabatta.
The 1-Step method has one advantage: It is very forgiving as to variations in time, hydration and temperature. If you ferment the sourdough for 4 hours longer,... it will affect it and maybe get more sour. But as you add a lot of new food later in form of new flour when mixing the final dough, it cannot get overproofed very easily. In the 45 minutes to 2 hours where you are present in the evening, you can react (mainly by baking the bread a view minutes earlier or later).
The 0-Step method needs a bit more constant settings. A view degrees more or a higher hydration and it will be ready earlier. It still is quite forgiving, but not that much.
Craig at pizzamaking.com made a nice table for different fermentation times and starter percentages for pizzadough at different room temperature levels. As pizzadough has a lower hydration, you cannot use the numbers directly, but you pretty much use it to estimate the times for changed settings with it, once you have a working recipe at your standard settings.
The main "advantage" is the more open crumb structure (, that I don't like very much, but most do). Also there is no need to knead.
Adrian
to answer a couple questions: I am interested in baking artisan-style hearth bread, a la Tartine or Forkish. In a covered ceramic cooker which gives a good crust and oven spring. Usually 20-30% whole wheat flour.
The reason for multi-day sourdough bread was that I understood it to develop more complex flavors. I am fine with the multi-day process as long as the hands-on step happen off business hours.
Well, in my opinion, too cold sourdough won't give a complex flavour, but just a sour one.
Warm(er) fermentation will give the flavourful lactic acids (that I like more); colder fermentation will give strong acetic acids. As I read "complex flavour" as having different kinds of flavour types, the key is to ferment at different temperature levels and not longer where the production of just one kind of flavour type is predominant. Refrigerating for a longer time to retard the fermentation doesn't seem to be a good solution to me, if you don't have longer periods of warm fermentation as well.
Starter, if stored in the fridge, usually does have acetic acid.
One solution: Use very little starter that it doesn't bring much already developed flavour and ferment at a medium temperature (26C = 78 to 79 F) where all flavours can develop. Here, you don't use less starter to ferment longer, but actually you have to ferment longer as you take less starter.
This is actually also best for oven spring, as at 26C, the sourdough-yeasts get most active compared to the other microorganisms.
To not push the yeasts too much, but have more acids, you can then move away from 26C. Then you have to have a shorter period of time warmer and a longer colder. (As everything goes faster when it is warm).
Another Solution:
In the german speaking countries, usually a large amount of sourdough/levain is used. This is where the flavour comes from. To develop a complex flavour, you either feed it in 3 steps and let it ferment at different temperature levels, or have a 1-step-method, where you vary the teperature.
To vary the temperature autmatically while i'm not at home/asleep, I feed my levain with 5% to 10% of starter, put it in the cold oven and put a teapot with boiling water next to it. This will give me falling temperatures over the hours.
Adrian
Adrian,
I'm not qualified to argue with you about what a colder environment will do to acid production, but I can say that at my house, with my starter, retarding my dough in the fridge for several days does seem to pull off more flavor without becoming acetic. In fact, after a week in the fridge, the flavor is very strong, more than what my family likes in their bread, but perfect for pizza! Even then, it is not acetic at all.
However, I feed my starter and make my bread usually with unbleached white bread flour. If I feed my starter with whole wheat flour, it turns acetic very quickly at room temperature. When using whole wheat flour for bread, I have to watch fermentation very closely and try to get the timing worked out so that the bread is ready to bake, but not overly fermented and acetic. Retarding for a few hours actually helps me get the timing to work out right, but after a day or so in the fridge, it is usually broken down from enzyme action and not good for bread or pizza.
I wonder if it's not the acetic acid you're reading as flavor but the increased alcohol from the long fermentation or increased breakdown of starches into sugars. Debra Wink has a post here describing why colder, stiffer doughs favor acetic acid production.
This really might be the case. I personally don't like the flavour/taste of cold retarded breads. I'll read the post form Debra Wink more thoroughly when I have more time without being interrupted. Thanks for the link!
Adrian