July 3, 2023 - 3:45pm
New to sourdough baking
Wonderful bakers,
I am trying to make Wild Yeast's Norwich sourdough bread, and need advice, please. Her recipe, as I understand it, says if you wish to retard the dough, do it after shaping and do a retarded proof. It would work ever so much better for me if I could do a retarded fermentation instead of proof.
Would this be ok, to do the retarded ferment instead of retarded proof?
Thank you for your kind advice and help to a beginner.
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https://www.chainbaker.com/bulk-vs-proof/
He has many interesting comparison videos.
Same thing if i read this correctly. Enjoy!
So cold ferment vs cold proof is baker's preference? Most of the articles do seem to address effects on commercial yeast bread, but I didn't see a strong reason to use cold proof instead of cold ferment with respect to a sourdough bread.
I apologize if I missed something in reading the various articles. I've baked a fair amount of commercial yeast dough, but now want to be able to make an acceptable sourdough bread. Thank you for your kind help.
Yes, yeast bread is the subject of most of the articles I have seen.
I don't do either so I'm the wrong person to be commenting. Cold (anything) has never worked for me. I stay on the hot side and get the results I want.
I enjoy experimenting with tiny loaves. When I'm in the groove I bake a small loaf every other day. If I could eat it faster I'd bake every day!
I am thankful for any and all advice or assistance. I think I will start the way you bake--no cold retarding (well, other than ambient temperature in my kitchen, which is about 68 deg F).
thank you for saying this Gary. i find i prefer the flavor with room temperature ferments. that goes for sourdough and biga and poolishes. that goes for pizza and bread. the only reason i ever use the fridge is to delay things cause I'm going out shopping or delaying a second loaf till my first one is baked, never for flavor.
i have two theories on this. one is that proofing at 50-60F (with a proofer but hotter than a fridge) might improve flavor but my fridge at 30-40 basically just delays things without adding flavor. secondly i wonder if the fact my room temperature in the desert tends around 80F gives me lots of flavor on its own.
i didn’t go find the recipe, but as others have suggested, i don’t think a refrigerated final proof is ever necessary, per se.
i have found that doing final proof in the refrigerator gives me better oven spring and over-all shape (less spreading when i transfer to dutch oven for baking), but i don’t hesitate to do a room temp final proof if that timing works better for me. i do think refrigerating changes the flavor, but i have not done a side-by-side test. like you, my room temp is on the colder side (60-70F — if it is warmer than that, i’d rather not bake).
might make sense to try the bulk and proof at your room temp and get a feel for how the dough behaves when fully-fermented and proofed just-right. then, you can add in retarding of either/both if/as it suits your schedule and you’ll know what you’re aiming for.
hope this helps!
-c
All of you have been such wonderful help to me! Thank you for your kindness, sharing of advice, and making this such a great place to seek advice.
I don't think it matters much for most home baking. What probably is the most important is how long the dough is refrigerated for, not when. I have baked bread both ways and both ways worked well.
In thinking about this, remember that the dough will take some time to cool down to the point that fermentation slows to a crawl. My rule of thumb is that it will keep fermenting for an hour. When warming up again, it takes roughly an hour to get to the point of reasonable fermentation rate again.
We do know that some fermentation goes on in the refrigerator even after the dough cools down, but it's much slower than it would be at room temperature. The flavor develops during the retardation, but it will also develop during a long room temperature ferment.
So what I tend to do- if I'm going to retard the dough - is to let the dough bulk-ferment until it's getting active and rising nicely, then retard it. But there's no need to fret about exact details, especially if you are learning how to do it and what you like. The timing should more be about using retarding to help fit into your schedule.
For example, suppose you wanted your dough to ferment overnight at room temperature but near bedtime you could see that it's fermenting too fast. You would have to get up early to bake, but you can't or don't want to. Just put it into the refrigerator, and finish with shaping and proofing the next morning or when it's convenient.
Or you might have enough time to bulk ferment it but not also to proof the loaves. OK, just shape the loaves and put them into the refrigerator until you can bake them. The longer the dough stays in the refrigerator the better the bread will taste - with limits of course but those limits are very tolerant.
I have also put fermenting dough into the refrigerator, and taken it out a day or two later to let it finish its bulk ferment at room temperature. I would do this if I planned for say a 12-hour ferment but the time window I had wouldn't fit in. I might ferment for 6 hours, retard overnight, bring the dough out, and ferment for another four hours. That's 6 hours plus an hour each for cooling down and warming up, plus another 4 hours for a total of 12.
Don't stress, just bake! That's a good motto for a home baker.
I retard during bulk fermentation. I just pulled dough out of the fridge from an overnight retard, it is shaped and proofing now in a warm moist proofing box.
So much kind and excellent advice! I did try the no-cold-retarding mentioned earlier with the loaf (1/2 recipe) the other day and got a good loaf of pan sourdough bread--pretty good bread for a beginner, but much room for improvement. Thank you for your encouragement--I will keep practicing and using your comments.
Seminola's post goes to illustrate how baking these kinds of breads has a lot of leeway in the techniques. And remember, small changes almost always have small effects, so don't worry about getting the details exactly just so. Yes, weigh your flour, but if the hydration is 72% instead of 70%, the dough will be a little softer and stickier but you might not even notice. It will work fine. If you do bulk ferment for 10 hours instead of 12, the bread will still work fine. If you bake at 400 deg F instead of 425 deg F, the bread might take five or seven more minutes to bake but it will still be wonderful.
Eventually each baker will settle on some combination of techniques and recipes that work well for him (her/them/whatever). Yes, there may be certain breads that require one to be more precise, but basic sourdough breads aren't among them.
Typing on automatic, I guess.
Dear tpassin,
Thank you for your most comforting words--you have instilled confidence in me to continue practicing--of course, changing only one thing at a time.