Night shift - night proofing dough in the refrigerator
Author Elena Zheleznyak,
🔗Right now I am writing this material, and in the refrigerator there is a form with dough, in the morning I will take it out, preheat the oven and bake it, and I will have excellent, fragrant, delicious sourdough bread right for breakfast. I will cut off a piece, spread it with butter or jam And at the same time I do not strain at all, the bread seems to make itself and lives its own bread life, I just drop in sometimes and find out: well, how did it come, is it time? Actually, it's already night, so before going to bed I'll set myself an alarm at 6 am to get the baking dish out of the refrigerator and let it warm up for a couple of hours and finally distance myself before baking. And I myself will go to inspect dreams under a warm children's barrel, even barrels! Yes, those who are on free bread can sleep longer!
![Overnight proofing dough in the refrigerator](https://Mcooker-enn.tomathouse.com/s-image/2231/files/1/7946/1138442/original/DSC_9048.JPG)
But today we will focus on those who are forced to wake up in the morning and go to work until the evening. Among you, workers, I know, there are also enough of those who are willing to sacrifice their time and energy to feed their families with real wholesome bread. There are even those to whom I promised to write about bread that could be baked to a working person, give recipes and a schedule (Anna, hello to you, sorry for taking so long to get my thoughts together). And all this time I tried recipes, and a schedule, and this and that, and I must say that I can not give any specific recipes. Because they all fit! But the schedule is, yes, an important point.
If you leave for work in the morning, for example, to be already in place at 9 or 10 (like a bayonet! - as my boss used to say once upon a time, when I also went to work every day before retirement, you have about three hours to bake bread. It is best to start right in the morning - to put the dough. Of course, in case you have already decided on the recipe. At the same time, whatever the recipe does not write, take the minimum amount of sourdough so that the dough is you will not return home, did not have time to become too sour and ferment. By evening it will be just the right thing. You can read more about it here.
If you have the opportunity to come home not at 19-20, but, say, at 16-17 o'clock, you can put the dough even then, but use a little more sterter - instead of 1 gr. 5-10 gr., So that the dough has time to come to the beginning of the evening kneading.
Closer to the night kneading. But here there may already be nuances: you can knead, let the dough come up for a couple of hours, shape and put in the refrigerator.
Or knead, let the dough come up for half an hour or an hour and hide in the refrigerator until morning. And in the morning:
- take out a mold or a basket of dough, warm it up for a couple of hours, simultaneously heating the oven with or without a stone (if the dough is in a mold), and bake.
- In the morning, mold and let the dough stand in the refrigerator until the evening (until you come home from work), and bake in the evening.
- Put the dough with a minimum amount of starter overnight, knead in the morning, ferment (this is the same 2.5 hours approximately), mold and put in the refrigerator until evening. And after work, bake, first letting the dough stand for a couple of hours to warm to room (or almost room) temperature.
Proofing or fermentation in the refrigerator is a prerequisite, if the dough is just left to ferment at room temperature for such a long period, it will surely ferment and become sour. Bread from this will turn out to be finely porous, sour, crumbly, in a word, not tasty. If you nevertheless forgot to hide the dough in the refrigerator, of course, it's a pity, but there is a way out of this situation. - Squeeze all the gas out of the dough, fold into a ball, cover well and hide in the refrigerator. It can live there for 2-3 days and it can be used as a ready-made dough. You just need to crush it every time the dough comes up in the refrigerator and use it within 2-3 days, otherwise there will be gluten problems.
Another important nuance is the fermentation temperature in the refrigerator. Everyone has different refrigerators that support different temperature conditions and the dough may suit differently. If you have a thermometer that can measure such a low temperature, good, because that way you can confidently know how quickly the dough will fit.
As for the temperature and rate of fermentation, it is known that:At a temperature of about 25 degrees, the dough will do on average in 2-2.5 hours.
At a temperature of 10 degrees - 8 hours.
At a temperature of 5 degrees - 18 hours.
These recommendations apply to almost any bread with any sourdough, even Sekowa sourdough. To check and make sure, I specially "revived" the bacterial enzyme again and baked bread on it. I baked according to the principle described here: in the afternoon I put in the leaven (100 g of whole wheat flour, 100 g of water and 5 g of a starter), in the evening I kneaded the dough and left it in the refrigerator for 10 hours. Warmed and baked in the morning.
In the photo there is a dough on a bacon enzyme and the dough that came up, straight from the refrigerator early in the morning.Contrary to the manufacturer's assurances that Sekowa sourdough dough can normally "work" only at temperatures close to 30 degrees and above, practice has proved the opposite. Therefore, I cannot say that the dough fermented too slowly at temperatures below 30 trads on a bacon enzyme, no, it is not, a little slower, but not critical. No longer than sourdough))
I fermented the dough from the above amount of flour, water and "lively" bacterment for about 6 hours at a temperature of 25 degrees and the dough, as you can see, had a good time to come up during this time. Nevertheless, if you put it in the oven with the light on or in the cabinet with a special light for fermenting Sekowa, thereby creating an ideal temperature regime, then the dough will ripen twice as fast - checked.
This schedule is convenient not only for those who work, but also for couch potatoes like me, especially in this heat. If you warm up the oven early in the morning, when the night's chill has not yet been replaced by the stifling heat, you can bake bread and not go crazy with even more heat. The kitchen, of course, has time to warm up, but it also has time to cool down. In addition, in this way, baking bread is generally extremely convenient: you do not need to adjust to the needs of the dough all day, you can freely walk the children, go to the store, leave, come. And the bread process itself is surprisingly simplified and it really starts to seem that bread appears on the table in some miraculous way, without any effort on your part. My children, according to kryane me, already think so
Delicious bread for you.