Intentional Cold Retard: when do you begin the cooling?
Hi,
We have been baking utility bread loaves for home use and working with our dough with the goal of making a nice useful loaf of bread.
With each batch I make, I like to take a few balls of dough and set them aside in the refrigerator for use later in the week.
These balls are separated from the main batch of dough after a bulk ferment, a subsequent folding, and a second rise. I cut the balls away when I am forming and preparing to proof the individual loaves.
I place the balls in sealed containers and store them in our household refrigerator.
I am writing to ask a question about "cold retard" because these dough balls are developing a very slight sour aroma and taste, which is not necessarily bad but not especially desirable as I am not attempting to work with sour dough.
My basic active dry yeast bread recipe includes an overnight 100% hydration preferment that is made with 400 grams of a total of 3000 grams of flour (13.33%?), which may be the source of the sour character, but the sensation only occurs with the dough that is stored for an extended time in cold storage. The fresh dough as is used for the primary goal of bread making yields a rich malty aroma.
I am unfamiliar with intentional "cold retard" processes, and have been very casual about considering the extra dough balls I set aside for cold storage.
This leads me to my question; if you are striving to do a cold retard process, do you get the dough into the cold storage at a much earlier juncture than I have described?
Thank you!