March 10, 2017 - 9:57am
Ideal Temperature to retard dough
I've been reading about retarding Bagel dough, and many articles say that it is done at 4.5 degrees C by a home baker and at `10C by a professional bakery. Is there any taste / texture advantage at setting the cooler at 10C rather than 4.5C, or is it purely an economic factor to save electricity or time?
Share
The 4.5C (or 40F) number comes from the standard recommendation for setting a home refrigerator to safely store food to prevent spoilage...that is the standard, so that is what home refrigerators are typically set at. You can retard dough just fine using that temp and it will knock back a great deal of the fermentation activity once your dough gets down to that temp (but that takes a little while).
At 10C (50F) there will be obviously be more active fermentation even when the dough is fully cooled, so that needs to be accounted for in the degree of fermentation before retarding and the total time you retard. You might also want to adjust the amount of yeast or levain used, depending on your timing and the sought after flavor profile.
So I think it is less about a clear taste/texture advantage of one over the other, more about timing.
Technically, as you go from 10C down to 4C, yeast activity will drop out before bacterial, but I'm not aware of much difference in the flavor profile of a bagel retarded at one temp vs another because of it within the scope of a typical time frame.
Professional bakeries use a range of temps for retarding AFAIK. I know at least a few that stay in the mid 40's (F).