I've been experimenting with ways to naturally colour my sourdough loaves.
So far, I have added activated charcoal, beet juice (leftover from boiling beets - NOT puree), carrot juice and spirulina powder to my base recipe:
450g bread flour
10g salt
75g 100% hydration starter
310g water
What I've found is that these additions seem to shorten fermentation times drastically.
Example: I can mix my dough 10am, and by 5pm (same day) the dough that was supposed to rest in the fridge overnight rises to the same level as the banneton.
Should I bake the dough straight after final shaping and skip the retarding?
What could be the reasons why the yeast activity is so active?
Could it be due to the climate I'm baking in (32 C), the amount of starter used, or the shaping technique (I was very careful not to deflate the dough at all as I wanted a more open crumb, so it was extremely puffy)
No, don't skip retarding or final proof. During bulk fermentation your dough is kinda shapeless. The shaping puts everything in a controlled order and puts a "skin" around the whole loaf. In order to get a good oven spring, you need to give the yeast some time to build more gas, thus bring more tension to the outer skin.
Since your dough is already so puffy, I can imagine you don't need a long final proof. You would risk overfermentation.
The ambient temperature is certainly a factor, 32°C is very warm and cosy. But I can imagine the additional sugars from the beet and carrot juice sped up fermentation noticeably...charcoal and spirulina powder could add some minerals (speeds up fermentation as well), but I have nothing to confirm that theory.