January 22, 2016 - 4:47pm
Oven spring and timing of folds
I was wondering if the timing of folds during bulk fermentation might affect oven spring. I made Ken Forkish's Walnut Levain Bread today and I was a bit disappointed that my loaves didn't get the usual oven spring that I have been getting with most of Forkish's recipes. I had to rush the folding so instead of having 20 to 30 minutes between the first fold and the second one, there was only about 10 minutes. The next fold was about 20 minutes later. The crust was awesome as usual and the crumb nice and springy with a much airier texture than I expected.
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...Are you in Australia or NZ by any chance?
Folding degasses the dough whilst strengthening the gluten, and I assume you did this is during the bulk fermentation plus you didn't bake before proving. If so, then the folding probably had little influence on your oven spring. It might just be that you timed your proving to perfection. Very satisfying when that happens and far more likely to be because of using at Dutch Oven or casserole as KF recommends.
The length of gaps between folds are fairly arbitrary, but for one factor: you need long enough for the gluten to relax in-between (usually at least 15-20min). You might notice the dough is very resistant when you leave a gap of only ten minutes. In baking books the gaps are usually spread out evenly to allow people to plan their time more effectively but the overall gluten development should be the same however you choose to time it.
i am not sure what you mean by dizzy unless the photo is upside down like it was showing in the thumbnail as I was uploading it, however, it shows right side up on my phone in my post. And i am in Canada.
Yes, I did the folding during bulk fermentation and then retarded the loabed in the fridge for 13 hours as per Forkish's instructions. The dough held together nicely when I turned them out of their proofing baskets so I was expecting great things in terms of oven spring. Mind you, the loaves are not bricks by any stretch of the imagination, they just didn't rise as high as I expected.
Okay, I see what you meant by your comment. It showed up fine on my phone but upside down on my computer. I fixed it. =)
Sorry about the typos. I can't see where the edit button is unless one doesn't exist in the mobile version of the site.
bad that it collapses in the heat. Over proofing of shaped loaves is fairly common in the fridge since we are usually sleeping instead of ........... watching the dough - and not the clock. '
Happy baiking
Thanks for the input as it very well could have been that Or maybe not long enough. I let it proof for 13 hours in the fridge as I have done for the other hybrid leavening doughs in Forkish's book except for one that I let go for 14 hours and that got huge oven spring. Could the walnuts weigh it down? I am on to Field Blend #1 today (working my way through the book) and will let this one go 14 hours to see what happens.
Whoops! The 14 hours won't work as the recipe specifies 12 hours and although others have said that Forkish's timing doesn't work for them, it has been pretty bang on for me. By the way, how do you tell that a loaf is fully proofed when coming out of the fridge? They don't seem to rise much and the poke test doesn't seem to work well on cold dough.
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So this is what I was expecting when making my Walnut Levain loaf. These are Field Blend #1 from FWSY. I am pretty pleased with these loaves. I did the stretches and folds roughly a half hour apart and let the bulk fermentation go an extra 40 minutes since it didn't seem to me that the dough had risen enough to be about 2 and half times the original volume. Proofing was in the fridge for exactly 12 hours as per the recipe.
Hi Danni,
May I second what RoundHay says about gluten development and time between stretch and folds. And add to it a bit.
Your time frame way up at the top was way too short for the gluten to develop or the dough to relax between folds. Anywhere from 25 minutes to as long as an hour would be appropriate times between folds. It is important to know the dough you are working with and also the environment you are working in.
There are a lot of folks on TFL who have stated that Ken Forkish's times for activities seem to far exceed their own observed time frames. I am led to believe that his kitchen temperature is generally cooler than what many of us have at home, and that he makes no mention of that and the need for adjustments. Mine generally always hovers at 79-80dF. Cooler environment = longer/extended bulk ferment time. Which is why a retarded fermentation can last for as long as 24 hours or more. A refrigerator at ~40dF will -eventually- slow down fermentation to an almost standstill. The more bulk in the dough the longer it will take for that bulk to cool down to ambient refrigerator temperature. Yeast likes to nap at about 40dF. Meanwhile there is flavor development going on all that time.
Now, that being said, if you do go the retard fermentation way, I believe that you can bypass the prove step itself. I have a ton of personal documentation on TFL to demonstrate this myself. I virtually never proof after a long cold nap. Will it work for the next person? I can't guarantee it, but I don't see anything so magical in what I do to dispel that notion.
One other thing related to what I state above, if you dare to give this a whirl. Throw away that "exactly 12 hour" jazz and pick a time frame suitable to your personal schedule (and I don't mean that you should leave town for a weekend in-between!).
There are an awful lot of TFL folks who are completely anal about abiding by the "exact" schedule stuff. But I'm here to tell you that it isn't that critical. You'll never know unless you have the nerve to try it yourself. Doubt me? Maybe you should, but check out my stuff to see what I say put into action. I generally don't do boules, just baguettes and batards, but the same rules should apply. No proofing out out of the refrigerator, I get to divide and shape the dough whenever I get around to it, and for the most part I really don't care how long the dough remains retarded before I get around to it - as long I have hit the "minimum" declared time to retard it. I just fire up Ol' Betsy, and after she's come up to baking temperature for ~40 minutes or so, the dough comes out of the refrigerator and within minutes get loaded into the oven.
My mantra is that I control the schedule, it doesn't control me.
As the old Alka-Seltzer commercial said: "try it, you'll like it".
alan
PS - wait till you get to Field Blend #2 - you should love that!
Oh and thank you for the compliment on my boules! I didn't see it on my first read through.
I like the idea of doing the bulk fermentation in the fridge and baking when I am ready for it rather than the other way around. A couple of questions then:
1. What is your minimum time for bulk fermentation in the fridge for a dough like Field Blend #2?
2. Do you find that the loaves have a distinctly more sour taste the longer you let the bulk fermentation go or is that affected more by the stage of the starter (fed more recently or at the edge of collapse)?
My family and I don't care for the sour taste in bread and the loaves from FWSY have not had a strong sour flavour at all. So far, we have loved all of the recipes although there was one that was ho-hum. I believe it was the white bread with polish but I would have to check my notes to be sure. Then again, that one doesn't use levain.
One more thing, the times are working perfectly most of the time for me because my kitchen is at 70 to 72 like Ken Forkish's. I guess that is one of the benefits of living in Canada during the winter. ;) If I recall right, he does have a paragraph in the book talking about room temperature and how bulk fermentation is shortened but I don't believe he goes into a lot of detail on how to amend this aside from possibly using cooler water to slow things down. I guess I will find out when I am making bread this summer.
Wow, that was fast!
I like to let a levain dough ferment for at least 10-12 hours in the refrigerator. Now, this is after the standard bulk fermentation has completed. But one needs to pay attention to what the creator of the formula states is an appropriate time (not what some wacko like me on TFL thinks is appropriate), and then work from there. There's no substitute like starting with the author's intended framework, and then experimenting from there!
My levain (meaning in my book what I create from a starter which eventually makes its way into the dough) is not sour, it is mildly sour at the very most. I believe that the level of sour in the final product is wholly dependent upon how the levain is created and the starter maintained. I am admittedly hardly the expert on this matter around TFL. There are dozens of contributors who have the appropriate brain power and background to answer that question better than I can. But I do think that the length of bulk ferment contributes less to the sour aspect rather than the levain used in a given formula. Let another person weigh in on this one...
I lived up the street from Ken's for 7 years and ate a lot of his bread. And I'll state that his bakery did not go for a more sour flavor profile. So I will posit that he doesn't go for a sour profile in FWSY either because of this preference. And I'll also agree that, in general, commercial yeasted breads do not match levain breads for flavor or lasting potential.
And to double down on what dabrownman said (and he is light years more advanced than I am BTW, even his dog has more experience than I do!). If you have over proofed your bread on the bulk fermentation side of the process, there is probably little hope that the ship will right itself on the baking side, regardless of the amount of time that you retard he dough.
I hope this clarifies some concepts a bit more...
alan
I went back and read quite a few posts on your blog and realized that what you meant above was to bake right out of the fridge after proofing in the fridge which is exactly what I am doing now. What I thought you meant was mix up my dough, do the folds, throw it in the fridge and when I felt like it, pull it out, shape and bake. No proofing.
So to get this right, I think you mean mix the dough, do the folds and let it bulk ferment at room temperature until I feel it is ready; it has doubled or tripled. Then put it in the fridge until I am ready to shape it. Pull out of fridge, shape and put back into fridge for proofing, then bake directly from the fridge. Do I have that right now?
If I wasn't clear enough at the outset, then my apologies. I will always bulk ferment on the counter until it is time to retard the dough. This step will completely abide by the author's instructions, with one exception being timing based on having a warmer kitchen than most.
Then a few hours of bulk retard (the time is somewhat unimportant here - can be an hour or even until the next morning) to pull the dough and divide, pre-shape and final shape. Subsequently back into the retarder until it is time to bake.
Let's see if my English language skills match my intended meaning this time! Having been born in the Bronx, I'll use that as my defense for deficient communication skills that exceed grunts and mumbles...
alan
Thanks for the chuckle! Your English skills are just fine. Might be my language skills that are in question since my first language is French although most people don't have a clue since I don't have a French accent when speaking English. :D
One more question from a pesky novice baker: Do you stick to the author's recommendations for proofing in the fridge or you go by the look of the loaf or do you just stick it back in there till you feel like baking it, within reason of course.
Being a bit of a rebel on the "how to bake it" front, I virtually never pay attention to the author's discussion of post retard proofing. Typically most formulae call for a bulk retard followed by a warm-up, then the divide, shape and proof, all done post-bulk retard.
Earlier in my short career I was following those "rules" as I needed to establish a foundation to work from. But once I spread my bread wings (not a pretty picture!) and decided to see what would happen if I changed around the order of things, I was quite pleased with the results. So I stuck to the "new" way of mostly ignoring the tried and true method of doing what the author wrote, and going off on my own little methodology. Do I get better results doing it my way? I really don't know, but I get results that I feel stand up to pretty much what I (or others) can do had I followed the standard steps.
I never look to see whether the dough is proofed anymore. I give it an appropriate amount of retard after the full bench bulk ferment. I trust that it is proofed by the time that I pull it from retard to be ready to bake. It completely frees me from doing finger dent tests, scheduling conflicts with other life activities (for the most part), or any of those other mundane tasks that one feels need be done with the dough. I will bet that as long as a professional bakery has room in the retarder and allows for scheduling of shaped dough well in advance of the bake (which takes up way more space than the bulk does, that they do what I am doing. Just pulling the dough directly from the retarder and pretty much right into the oven.
PS your French accent did not come through on your post. At all!