How to fit sourdough baking into your daily schedule

Wondering how to fit sourdough baking into your daily schedule? Baking sourdough takes a reasonable amount of time. But that's not really your time, ie the time you would spend making bread. Most of this time is waiting for the bacteria and yeast to do their work. Feeling liberated? Read.

Most importantly, baking sourdough bread does not require you to stay at home. However, making and fermenting sourdough while you're away for parts of the day will require some understanding of fermentation principles and planning ahead (much like life, right?). Let's see the steps on how to fit sourdough baking into your daily routine.

So how do you fit sourdough baking into your daily routine?

1. Understand how fermentation works

Water temperature, ambient temperature, flours used and the amount of starter in the dough are the variables that most affect the fermentation dynamics of sourdough bread. By changing those variables, you can easily adjust the fermentation time of the dough to suit your absence from home. Increase the temperature and amount of starter and your dough will ferment faster and vice versa. Getting the right temperatures and amounts of starter will take a bit of experimentation so you don't have too much dough when you get home. This is especially important in the summer when temperatures rise.

2. Be clear about what kind of bread you want to bake and then plan (ahead) wisely

Different types of dough (or rather types of bread) may require different approaches to handling the dough. In all cases, baking will require advance planning and adjusting recipes to fit the times when you are home and can work with dough (ie before work, after work, etc.)

The two easiest sourdough breads to make when you're away are Sourdough Baked Sandwich Bread and Baked Sourdough Foccacia. With both doughs you will simply mix the dough, cook it for a few minutes to firm up the dough, transfer it to a greased baking sheet, let it rise until doubled in size, and then bake it. Easy, right?

I usually mix the dough for sandwich bread or focaccia in the morning before I go to work and depending on the season I let it ferment at room temperature or in the cellar until I come home in the afternoon. At best, the dough is ready to pop in the oven in an hour after I get home (while the oven preheats). It's better to come home with a bit of impervious dough than an isolated dough with almost no way back.

You can make both types of bread in the afternoon in less time, simply by mixing the dough with larger starting quantities which will cause the dough to ferment faster (also put the dough in a warm place ). This way, you can have simple (but very tasty) bread for dinner.

Using seasonal fruit in focaccia is one way to improve your sourdough bread and it's basically two in one – bread and dessert.

Put sourdough baking in your daily schedule

3. Make your refrigerator your best friend

When I discovered the refrigerator, I became a happy baker, or at least I slept more. Putting the dough in the refrigerator after measuring fermentation at room temperature allowed me to go to sleep and avoid excess proofed dough in the morning. Using the fridge, my dough was ready to go into the oven when I woke up in the morning. (OK, once I forgot to put the dough in the fridge and the scene in the morning was not pleasant.)

The refrigerator can serve you the choice of a cold bulk fermentation or a cold final rise of the dough (or both). In both cases, the signs of proper dough development are the same as in fermenting your dough at room temperature.

In addition to solving sleep problems, cold fermentation also brings out the special character of the dough, bringing out the subtle sourness of the bread and making it extremely delicious.

Before putting the dough in the fridge, just make sure to cover it with a plastic bag or something similar as the fridge dries things out.

4. Experiment and iterate

Practice makes perfect (bread). As you observe how your dough behaves under different circumstances, you will be able to judge the temperature and amount of starter needed to reach the desired level of baking.