I made my second sour dough loaf and I had both loaves (the recipe makes two) doing the final proof in the fridge for 10 hours. I got tired and decided to wait till the morning. When i got up, my oven wouldn't fully heat, so I was dead in the water. I ended up going to a friend's place later on in the day and baked in her oven. The bread turned out great, although one loaf was a bit overdone, because I think the recipe temp was too high.
I was wondering, this was definitely 3x the proofing time the recipe called for but the bread turned out great. Can you overproof sour dough? What happens if you do over proof? If you proof the dough out of the fridge, should you cut the time in half?
The answer to can you over proof sourdough, or any dough - is yes. And a note on terminology. For the most part, proofing refers to the stage after fermentation where the dough is allowed to rise at room temps. And the time up to that stage is referred to as fermentation. Fridge time is considered fermentation time (I call it gluten formation time), and you can over ferment a dough, but at fridge temps (below 40F) it will generally take a while, maybe a long while.
What happens when over proofed - the bacteria and fungus will consume all the available food. And when this happens you will get a pale (no sugars to caramelized and turn brown) and dense brick like loaf (gluten will be broken down so nothing to make air pockets which is what gives us rise and a soft texture).
Your loaf came out good as it was not over proofed (it still had enough sugars to get a nice caramelization to it) and it rose well due to good (very good after 3 days) gluten formation.
Don't be afraid of the fridge - is a bread makers best friend. Enjoy!
Thanks!
I regularly make batches of dough and hold them in the fridge for up to 5 days. Mind you this is dough that has generally completed a 3-5 hour bulk fermentation, but has not been shaped into loaves. This morning I made 2 batards from a 2.8 kg batch mixed yesterday. Tomorrow or next day I’ll bake 2 more. Has been working great for me and allows us to have fresh bread more often with less effort. Hard to imagine that a few extra cold hours could do much damage to shaped loaves. I should mention that after 5 days the dough seems to break down so that’s my maximum retard.
And yes, you can overproof sourdough. I have, but it’s been on the counter when a 2 hour hike turned into a 5 hour picnic with more wine consumed than was prudent.
Good luck,
Phil
"And yes, you can overproof sourdough. I have, but it’s been on the counter when a 2 hour hike turned into a 5 hour picnic with more wine consumed than was prudent.
Good luck,
Phil"
HAHAHAHA!!! I've been on that SAME trail before :)
I always worried about over fermenting in the fridge... In the past, I had been mixing late afternoon / early evening, fermenting overnight and then baking the next morning. On one of those hike / picnics Phil speaks about (above) I left it in the fridge 2 nights. I was going to toss it and went though baking just for giggles. WOW!! The flavors were twice as prevalent as any bread I had made to that point, and for the first time my bread tasted like a REAL sourdough loaf. I just finished my longest fermented loaves (mixed day 1 AM, baked day 3 AM) and they are fabulous... give it a try! Based on the conversation here I'm going to try a 3 night wait and see what happens !
Joe