Baking with sourdough on a tight schedule

 

 

I’m a typical weekend baker. In the weekends I have at least some spare time.
The weekdays are hopeless.
I get up early an goes to work, and I stay there for at least 9 hours. When I come home, there seems to be an endless list of things that have to be taken care of if the house is not supposed to sink down in total anarchy.
With two kids and a cat in the house, that can happen very quickly.

So I’ve always felt some resistance about baking with sourdough on a Wednesday,
which is quite stupid because you are far more flexible if you are baking with sourdough starter than with commercial yeast.
Besides, the feeling of slicing up a freshly baked sourdough bread is something special. Fresh sourdough bread adds some luxury to a somewhat mediocre weekday.

All of you who bake regularly know, of course, what I am talking about. And I know some of you have no problem with baking on a Monday. But for all of you who, like me, are struggling to overcome that mental barrier (aka laziness), I have written this post.
This is a learning process even for me so I will write both about my successes and failures.
But to learn something you have to start somewhere, so let’s start where everything starts.

1st ATTEMPT

Day one, 10:40 PM / 22:40
And everything starts with the starter. I took out my wheat starter from the fridge and fed it. After that, I left it on the kitchen counter before I went to bed. The temperature in my kitchen was about 72ºF/22ºC, and the hydration of the starter is 100%.

 

 

Day Two, 6:20 AM / 06:20
Before I went to work, I mixed a preferment including wheat flour, water, and starter. I made it quite stiff to reduce the fermentation speed. The hydration was only 50%. It will stand at room temperature for 10 – 11 hours, and that’s quite a long time. I could have placed it in the basement where the temperature is much lower, but I know that many of you readers out there, don’t have that possibility, so I left it in the kitchen.

Day two, 5:30 PM / 17:30
When I came home from work, I checked the preferment. It had raised a lot, but it collapsed when I touched the surface, so I felt that it was high time to mix the dough. I added flour, water, and salt, and let it rest for an hour. After that, I performed three stretch and folds, spaced out with 30 minutes.
After that I let it ferment untouched until it was time to go to bed.

Day two, 10:30 am / 22:30
Before I went to bed, I formed a batard and placed it in a lined banneton. I wrapped it up with plastic bags and placed it in the refrigerator. My refrigerator holds a temperature of approximately 42ºF/6ºC

Day three, 6:15 PM / 18:15
After I had preheated the oven, it was time to take out the loaf from the refrigerator. I immediately suspected that it was slightly over proofed, as It didn’t pass the finger poke test to my satisfaction.
After 15 minutes in the oven, my suspicions were verified. The oven spring was poor. However, I found out that the crumb was not so bad. It was not as dense as I thought it would be, and the taste was acceptable. It was rich in flavor and not too sour.
I would have been satisfied if it wasn’t for the appearance.

 

 

 

It was an ugly loaf of bread.

I had to change something. Apparently, 20 hours in my refrigerator for the final rise was too much. So I looked over my schedule to see how I could get a shorter final ferment. The best would be if I could form the loaf in the morning and bake it in the evening.
If I let the first fermentation (bulk fermentation) occur in the refrigerator during the night, that would be possible. That meant that I had to go up earlier in the morning. It wasn’t very tempting, because I’m already going up at 5:40 am, but if that was what had to be done, I would do it.

 

 

2nd ATTEMPT.

After I had made all the necessary changes to my schedule, it looked as follows.

Day one, 10:40 PM / 22:40
I took out my wheat starter from the fridge and fed it. After that, I left it on the kitchen counter before I went to bed. The temperature in my kitchen was about 72ºF/22ºC, and the hydration of the starter is 100%.

Day Two, 6:20 AM / 06:20
Before I went to work, I mixed a preferment including wheat flour water and starter. I followed the same procedure and made it quite stiff. The hydration was 50%. I placed it at room temperature, about 72ºF/22ºC.

Day Two, 6:00 PM / 18:00
I checked the preferment when I came home from work. It was obvious that it had reached its fermentation peak and was going backward. I placed it in the refrigerator, as I couldn’t mix the dough at that time.

Day Two, 8:00 PM / 20:00
I mixed the dough with my preferment, additional wheat flour, and water. After that I let the dough rest for an hour. I performed four stretch and folds before I placed the dough in the refrigerator before I went to bed at 10:45 PM/22:45.

Day three, 5:40 AM/ 05:40
I took out the dough from the refrigerator and formed a batard. After I had placed it in a lined banneton, I wrapped it in plastic and put it back into the refrigerator.

Day three, 6:00 PM / 18:00
Moment of truth. Had I succeeded this time? After I had preheated the oven, I took out the banneton from the refrigerator. The dough felt much better this time. It had much more strength and responded better to the finger poke test.
I sliced the loaf and placed it in the oven. Finally, I got the oven spring I wanted. I even got a nice ear.

 

 

CONCLUSION

Now I have proved to myself that I can bake great sourdough on a weekday. The fact that I work full time is no excuse for not baking great bread on a Wednesday.
I got exactly the result I wanted. A loaf of good looking bread with an almost cracker-like crust, and a nice, open crumb that tastes the way I want it. Not as sour as I thought it would be, which surprised me. After all, it had spent almost 20 hours in the refrigerator.

 

A FEW WORDS ABOUT THE INGREDIENTS

Levain:
145 g wheat bread flour, 11.5 % protein
75 g water
9 g wheat starter, 100% hydration

Dough:
220 g levain
180 g wheat bread flour, 11.5 % protein content.
70 g whole wheat flour, 13 % protein content.
220 g water
9 g sea salt.

This post is not a traditional recipe, but you can try to bake this bread with the above ingredients and information. Additional information about temperature,etc. can be found in this post.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Perhaps I could have got the same result in my first try by lowering the temperature in my refrigerator.
But I’m reluctant to that. I have a good balance in my refrigerator, and I don’t want to mess with it.
Besides, The only thing I had to do differently was to tweak the schedule a bit and get up 10 minutes earlier.
It was worth it.