I'm new at sourdough. I let my loaves rise during the day and then put them in the fridge so I could bake them in the morning and have fresh out of the oven bread when my kids woke up, but they collapsed! Can i repurpose my dough, can I shape and let rise again to make bread or should I do something else like rolls? Is the dough good at all?
Shape and let rise again, then bake. I think your instinct for rolls is a good one, as the gluten may be a little weaker than you'd like for holding up a whole loaf.
Pizza, would a good repurpose for over proofed dough. After all pizza was born of the baker-mans waste! Smile...Good luck.
Next time, put your loaves directly in the fridge after shaping. The reason the collapses was because they overproofed.
I think the trapped gas contracts and that collapses the dough. I’ve observed that if I refrigerate puffy dough, it deflates by the time it cools down. In those cases, it’s not overproofing in half an hour in the fridge. After a few cases of this issue, I’ve concluded that you just have to fridge dough before it inflates much.
The dough can no longer support itself... Anyhow, leaving the dough to rise all day on the counter and then refrigerating it and expecting it to stay puffy for the next morning doesn’t work as you have observed. It takes a while for the dough to cool down and stop the yeast activity. Half an hour barely starts cooling it down. The dough is active that whole time.
If you are going to do some counter time, no more than an hour. Personnally, I shape my dough, give it no more than 5 minutes on the counter and then pop it in the fridge.
By the way, it would help if you posted your recipe so we know how much levain you used, your ingredients and method. Those all affect how the dough behaves.