Delaying half the sourdough to bake two loafs subsequently in small oven, how to do?
Hi everyone!
I am hooked on a fantastic three-stage 70% rye sourdough bread. I hope I can just jump right in and ask for some advice. I want to be able to bake two loafs subsequently, because I have a small oven. How do I organize and time a double bake? Can anyone enlighten me? :). Do I delay half the dough or do I just knock the air out of the second half of the dough and reproof? I tried this last option but it didn't work out well - the second loaf didn't rise like it should. Help would be much appreciated!
The third dough-stage has a little bit of yeast in it as well btw..
1st stage= 15 - 24 hours of ripening
2nd stage= 3 hours of ripening
3th stage= 20 minutes resting => shaping => +/- one hour proofing
exact recipe:
https://www.weekendbakery.com/posts/3-stage-70-rye-bread-with-raisins/
I would try dividing the dough at stage 2. Retard one of the halves in the refrigerator for an hour, then take it out and proceed with the regular schedule for it - that is, two more hours of ripening. An hour might even be a little too long if you want to bake the second loaf right after the first.
I haven't tried anything like this with rye, but for a mostly wheat bread I have good confidence it will do what you want. The dough will continue fermenting to a degree for an hour, or less if the amount of dough isn't large. It might not be fully warmed back up by the time you get to stage 3, but I don't think that will matter much.
TomP
Thanks Tom! I am hoping there is a way to only mix once - I forgot to mention that specifically. That's my wish at least. I don't know if it's possible dough.
If not, I think the second stage is a good suggestion. I could use even warmer water than usual to compensate for the lower temperature of the dough. But again, that route would mean mixing a second batch from the refrigerated dough.
Is it even possible to keep the dough as one batch, then divide the dough in the third stage, proof both halves at room temperature, bake just one and knock the CO2 out of the leftover half and reproof it? I did read about that, but I don't know how viable that method is.
I assumed you want to stick with the process you wrote about as closely as possible. If you don't mind deviating, there are all sorts of possibilities. Will just made one suggestion, and there are many others.
Staying with your 3-stage process for a moment, I don't quite know what is happening at the 2nd stage vs the first. But the dough dividing I mentioned would take place after the second stage has been mixed or prepared and is ready for its beauty sleep.
I've been assuming that your dough is mostly wheat flour. If so, most of my breads are made by mixing everything together at the start, doing a bulk ferment with some stretch-and-fold sessions, then shaping and proofing. Unless you are doing something very specialized, or are adding a lot of inclusions late in the cycle - and we're not talking about hardcore rye - I think that mix-bulk-shape will produce very good bread for a minimum of effort for you.
Also, as you have probably noticed, once the gluten has been set up after initial mixing/kneading, it's hard to work other ingredients into the dough, whether yeast, starter, more water, or whatever. So I don't do that except on special occasions.
You can add refrigeration almost anywhere in the pipeline to adjust for your schedule (and as a extra benefit improve the flavor). For example, if you shaped your two loaves and let them proof for an hour, you could put them into the fridge until the next day, and take one out to bake an hour before the other.
As another example, a few days ago it turned out that the oven would be in use during the time frame I had intended to bake. So I put the bulk fermentation tub into the fridge for an hour and a half. Then I proceeded with shaping and proofing, and baked after the oven conflict was past. The bread was terrific.
Easy!
TomP
I would recommend a long cold refrigerated final proof. Overnight for instance. Then bake both in secsetion straight from the cooler.
Kind regards,
Will F.
Thank you, salutations to you too Will!
That's an interesting suggestion! It also separates the "hard work day" from the "baking day", which suits me well. We might have a winner here! It will take some experimenting, but that's part of the fun. I'm curious how it will turn out! I appreciate it!
Here are a couple of factors to keep in mind.
All fermentation activity will stop at 37°F. Keeping that in mind the length of the actual overnight proof is dependent on the, dough temperature at the beginning of cold proofing. Since as I mentioned fermentation will end for all intents and purposes, there is little danger of over proofing. I agree that this is a very elegant streamlined solution.
Kind regards,
Will F.
Thanks for your elaborate reply TomP. And thanks Will, that was right to the point...
So after shaping, I can directly put the banneton with the dough in the refrigerator and let the proofing happen in there overnight? Or do I proof the bread first and THEN put it in the refrigerator?
I use water of 84°F/29°C, when making the dough. My refrigerator cools to about 43°F/6°C
1. Yes that's what I am doing straight into the cold proofing directly after the shaping. ( All indications so far show it works well with my AP flour formula)
2. In my humble opinion at 43°F you could consevably run into an over proofing issue. My understanding is that 37°F is the point fermentation stops completely. At 43°F fermentation will continue throughout the cold Proof. Albeit at a very slow rate.
Chemical activity is temperature-dependent. Different enzymes and fermentation activities will slow down to different degrees for some temperature. The temperature dependence tends to be exponential, but there is no temperature where it stops completely. 37 deg F/2.8C is a guideline, not a hard and fast barrier. In my refrigerator, which is cooler in most places than 37 eg. F I have had rising activity happen visibly over a time period of days. Also, the fact that the flavor of the baked bread changes with increasing refrigeration shows that activity of some kind continues in the fridge.
In the case of high-rye breads, what counts is to what degree the destructive enzymes get slowed down enough during cold storage. In part that will depend on the particular rye berries, which from what I have read are different in this respect than many European ryes.
I imagine that Mariana could bring more light to this conversation if she has been following along.
Some people do put the loaf directly into the refrigerator, but I think it's better to let it partly proof first. That's because it will continue to ferment for roughly an hour after going into the cold. (This is a rough gauge, not an exact time). So proof it until it's an hour from being done - you will have to guess but the exact value isn't critical. Also, all fermentation activity won't stop, just slow down a great deal. Your refrigerator is a bit warm so probably that hour might be on the long side. Maybe 1 1/2 hour instead. You will just have to try it out.
I am curious what you guys think about the following info I came across because my bread is 70% Rye and 100% whole grains:
:"You may need to experiment a little to find the cold proofing time that works for you and your dough.
The only caveat here would be if you're using wholegrains or rye. These flours may not cope as well with cold proofing as bread flour.
Wholegrain and rye flours may be more sensitive to the acids in your sourdough starter and have a weaker gluten network which will bread down more easily."
Will it be a problem with "my" recipe?
That is very interesting, since it is contrary to my research. Up front I want to make clear I am not an expert by any stretch of the imagination. Now if we are talking about the same protest enzymes in rye and whole wheat that effect wheat white flour, I read that they are less active at lower temperature. If there are other enzymes at play on tye and whole grain wheat well, then that changes everything. I have the first of my two test breads in the oven now. It looks promising. Stop by in a while to check out the results.
Kind regards,
Will F.
I don't have much experience with high-rye breads, and I haven't held them in the cold that I can remember. For the most part rising in rye breads does not come about from gluten but from other components in the rye flour. These tend to be attacked, as I read, by amylase enzymes that tend to be present in larger quantities in rye. In addition, the bran in whole grains tends to damage any gluten that does get built up or reduce it in effectiveness. Acids in the sourdough help protect against the enzyme attack.
Cold storage will slow down any amylase (and other enzymatic) activity. How that all balances out, though, I don't have experience with.
This particular dough has one hour of proofing time. I think I'll keep the fridge-temp as is and chuck the dough right in it after shaping. The dough already has had 20 minutes of resting time by then. See what happens! This bread is so delicious - even when the baking fails it's heavenly, I must confess.
btw: I was wrong about the recipe being 100% whole grains; 30% of it is actually plain wheat flower. So that will help. Apart from handling the sticky dough, this isn't a very difficult bread to bake I think. I'll post a pic!
is that the more rye flour in the dough (as compared to wheat) the stiffer the dough will become at cooler temperatures when compared to wheat dough. When cooled too long (many hours or overnight) trapped gas can escape the dough through expansion cracks. (That is one of the reasons why rye starters rise less than wheat starters in the fridge.) I don't think this will be any problem for a short chill to stagger baking.
How big is the oven and the size of the dough before dividing? Maybe changing the size of the loaf to do one bake might be a possibility?
My gut feeling tells me you are right. I am going to bake in a new 5 liter cast iron pan that came with a very big banneton. I could try making one loaf out of it but I made about 1800 grams of dough. I am not sure if it will fit the banneton. I don't know if a big weight will have a negative impact on the baking result. Maybe I'll do a second retarded bake of only a few hours today - in stead of all night. Good that I just read your reply in time! Thanks a lot!
My oven isn't big enough for two loafs at the same time.
Should there be anyone who has pulled an all nigher off (with a 70% rye dough) please let me know (but I don't think so)
Not to your point but your rave review made me try the recipe and, when I told me niece I was making a raisin rye, she asked me if I could add some cinnamon so she wouldn't have to go buy the bagels she loves.
So I followed the recipe exactly but added a scant tablespoon of cinnamon powder with the raisins in the final mix.
I've never like cinnamon raisin bagels -- too sweet with no dough flavor. I always considered them goyish inclusions, an attempt to appeal to folks who didn't like the malty crispness of plains or sesames or onions or even salt bagels.
But this 'bagel loaf' was fantastic. All the depth of a high-rye with the sweet spicy smell & taste of raisins and cinnamon.
I'm afraid I'm hooked.
Rob
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It looks delicious, and deliciously moist too. What flakes did you sprinkle on top?
The sour, sweet and salty notes are balanced dangerously well in this bread. I have it with just butter. Even without.
I ate my first loaf like a hamster. This is the bread I eat each morning.
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Question:
This dough needs to stay moist during shaping because it doesn't handle flour inclusion well - it can lead to cracks. So this time I tried wetting my hands in stead of dusting. I used a rotan banneton which a sprayed lightly and dusted heavily, but the dough sticked terribly during the dumping.
How could I get away with the wetting technique but without using a cloth banneton cover? Any tips?
I also wet my hands for shaping -- and I wet them several times earlier in the process as I mixed in the raisins and ground cinnamon, in a kind of demi-bassinage.
As I haven't yet seasoned my new banneton, I simply sprinkled the top of the roughly shaped boule with some instant oats that were in the kitchen and inverted it into a bowl for the proof. It took a little gentle prodding to get it to release but it worked reasonably well. Still, I might try regular rolled oats for the next one I bake, as they'll likely do a bit better as an anti-stick barrier.
Thanks again, NN, for posting about this great recipe!
Rob
I promised a pic. The loaf came out flat again - flatter than when baked without Dutch oven. This is my third bake in a cast iron pan - all loafs were practically without oven spring.
They end up flatter than before I put them into the Dutch oven. This loaf was baked in a very big pan and got less color to the crust compared to the bake with my smaller cast iron pan. But one thing both pans had in common; they're not giving me much oven spring. Is this normal? I would love to hear your experiences with Dutch oven's
your crumb looks good, so I think the key is that, as you say, your dutch oven is larger than your cast iron pan.
Here's my experience:
I doubled the recipe so the dough would be a size I was confident would fill the base of my round dutch oven. I proofed it in a narrow circumference bowl -- several inches narrower than the d.o. -- to accentuate height as much as possible. Once I inverted it onto parchment paper, I supported it on 4 sides to prevent extra spreading. Then I slashed it, misted it generously, & baked it 20 minutes with the top on, 25 min with the top off, and 4 min out of the pan entirely to firm up the sides.
I wouldn't call the oven spring immense, but it was what I would expect for a high %age rye.
One other question: does your oven have warmer & cooler spots? This could possibly account for the lack of browning in your pix.
Rob
A flat loaf without much sign of oven spring would tend to indicate one of these -
1. Over-fermentation in the bulk stage;
2. Overproofing;
3. Baking so soon after forming the dough that the yeast has not had time to multiply much nor generate much CO2;
4. A very high hydration for the dough, especially if the strength of the dough hadn't been developed enough.
According to your schedule, #3 seems to be ruled out. #1 seems plausible. The pale color suggests that there is not much sugar available at the surface to brown the crust, which would also be consistent with #1. The yeasts may have used up all the sugars, leaving few to metabolize to CO2 or for browning during the final proof and bake.
Thanks guy's, I will try doubling the recipe as you did Rob. I am hoping for more steam with more dough in it. Useful how you described the steps you took to keep the bread from spreading out - the higher the bread the more heat it will get from the top of the d.o. This big Dutch oven came with a big banneton, I will use it to get as much height as possible.
This bake, I delayed half the dough by putting the banneton in the fridge. It had risen exceptionally well. I think it had to do with the extra firmness it got from the fridge, and of course the extra time it had. Unfortunately I will never know if it had potential to hold itself up during baking - or was over proofed - because the dough sticked hopelessly to the banneton and had to be scraped out onto the first half ;). I didn't show that loaf in the pics.
I might also experiment with the proofing time in the bulk stage. Not a bad idea Tom...
Thanks, Martin