I feed my sourdough starter on Tuesday evening, I know bad timing. Fed it again on Wednesday, mid morning. By Wednesday at 8 pm, the starter was fed, passed the float test and was aching to be made into bread.
The timing was bad because it means that I need to nurse the bulk rise and the proofing into the wee hours of the morning. Second issue that pointed to bad timing was that I just got an order of a ton of food and the fridge was packed, where the hell am I going to rest 4 2-litre containers of sourdough? Outside of course! At about 3 am, the proofing was done, so the dough went outside in 4 lidded containers. I went to bed!
At about 1 pm, after returning from a dr appt, I got the oven up to temp and was getting the dough from outside, when I noticed that it was not sitting up as straight as I thought I recalled from 3 am. I took all 4 buckets inside. When I popped the lid off of the first one, it belched out a big puff of air. The temperature outside was not enough to stall fermentation. Each bucket of dough had risen to the tippy-top of the bucket. This could have been a potential problem. Was all the yeast used up and there would be no rise in the oven? I'd have to see. Given that this is the end of 90% of my flour on hand, I would not be happy at having an epic fail on my hands.
So, from this flat circle of slashed dough .....
The timing was bad because it means that I need to nurse the bulk rise and the proofing into the wee hours of the morning. Second issue that pointed to bad timing was that I just got an order of a ton of food and the fridge was packed, where the hell am I going to rest 4 2-litre containers of sourdough? Outside of course! At about 3 am, the proofing was done, so the dough went outside in 4 lidded containers. I went to bed!
At about 1 pm, after returning from a dr appt, I got the oven up to temp and was getting the dough from outside, when I noticed that it was not sitting up as straight as I thought I recalled from 3 am. I took all 4 buckets inside. When I popped the lid off of the first one, it belched out a big puff of air. The temperature outside was not enough to stall fermentation. Each bucket of dough had risen to the tippy-top of the bucket. This could have been a potential problem. Was all the yeast used up and there would be no rise in the oven? I'd have to see. Given that this is the end of 90% of my flour on hand, I would not be happy at having an epic fail on my hands.
So, from this flat circle of slashed dough .....
 |
| before hitting the dutch oven |
I got this crusty beauty.
To answer my question above, indeed, not all the yeast been consumed and output of the carbon dioxide had not been exhausted in the 10 hours of ferment.
These loaves are some of the best tasting bread that I have ever made. I think the resting at a higher temperature helped produce that. I think that resting the dough in the refrigerator is too cold for a next day bake, I will need to bake them after 2 days.
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