Over the past few months I've been trying delayed fermentation technique (pizza dough and basic bread dough mostly) as inspired by BBA. In between these attempts, I've also been doing the usual fast (all in one day) rise baking.
Although I've not had a baking session with both delayed and fast-rise going in the oven together to compare side by side, I'll be honest I can't really find much improvement using delayed fermentation. In fact I've gotten better, tastier, crustier results in some cases using fast-rise.
I'm curious to know whether I'm expecting too much from delayed fermentation. Are the differences dramatic or subtle? Do I simply not have a discerning palate to appreciate the complexities of delayed fermentation?
Please tell me how it has worked for you.
Toby
David
Hi Camochef,
yes I did follow the BBA recipe for ciabatta (poolish). I did not get a very good crumb but that was probably due to poor handling more than anything.
I do know that I got pretty good results using an all-in-one-day method.
I will certainly revisit the recipe sometime in the future. I've not yet tried pate fermentee for baguettes etc. Diastatic malt is something I've read about but I've limited myself to using readily available ingredients for the moment. Again, I intend to try it in the future.
Thanks for the info.
I have pretty much totally gone to cold, delayed fermentation ever since I attended Peter Reinhart's lecture at The Asheville Artisan Bread Festival in March. I checked, and that was 34 loaves ago. As HogieWan mentioned, one the best benefits is in scheduling flexibility.
My schedule runs pretty much like this: Day 1-refresh starter at 2:00ish, and at 10:00ish Day 2- Mix, perform 4 S&Fs @ 10 minute intervals, scale to loaf sizes, and move straight to a 38 degree fridge.
Bake days are on Day 4, 5, or 6...whichever is most convenient. Not an odious amount of work on any given day, but enough to be Zen like.
My wife and I both feel day 5 or 6 produces the tastiest bread, but all are excellent. Life is good!
I've been experimenting with long fermentation too. I've been baking only with sourdough starter for a while, and frankly, I do not like the extra sourness that comes with this method. If timing were not an issue, I wouldn't do it.
Murvet
I pitched the yeast into my last batch about 40 hours ago and there is still almost no kreusen on top and no airlock activity. I'm not really worried about it just puzzled as to why a delay in this batch. I did things pretty much the same as my past ten or so batches. Maybe a bit lower pitching temperature but that's it. Usually I get a very active fermentation in eight hours or so. Any thoughts?