JennyBlogs

Cold Retard: Does It Matter How the Dough Is Covered?

Adding Inclusions to Sourdough Bread

Is an Autolysis Necessary for Sourdough Bread?

Using All-Purpose Flour vs. Bread Flour in Sourdough Bread

Sourdough Terminology

New Sourdough Series

Favorite Blueberry Muffins

Jenny's Favorite Cinnamon Rolls

Testing a Flour’s Hydration Capacity

Measure out a small amount of desired flour into several small bowls. 20g is a good amount in each bowl, keeping it small and manageable, but still a decent enough chunk to work with. You can test different flours side by side. Keep all the bowls labeled or use different colors/styles, so the different flours don’t get mixed up.
Decide which hydration levels you’d like to test with the flour. Start with a hydration you feel the flour can hold comfortably, probably under 70%, then work your way up from there. Increments of 5% usually work nicely.
Calculate how much water to add, and mix into each bowl.
Thoroughly mix each bowl, kneading and working until a smooth dough has formed. If you don’t want to continue kneading a bunch of tiny pieces of dough, you can let them sit, covered, for several hours and check back.
Once the tiny bits of dough have had a chance for adequate gluten development, by kneading or by sitting, it’s time to check each one. You will probably have already noticed how each bowl of dough acts a little differently.

Now to Determine Which Hydration Levels the Flours Like

It’s easiest to start with lower hydration levels. The bit of dough should look smooth and feel elastic. It should pass the window pane test. If it doesn’t, the dough may need more time to sit or more kneading.

Work your way up the bowls, stretching, kneading, feeling as each bit of dough gets looser and stickier. You may notice as you work with the higher hydration bits that the dough will start to show some little tearing as you stretch it. Once the tearing becomes more noticeable, the dough doesn’t seem to be able to hold much shape, and the dough doesn’t pass the windowpane test, you have probably gone past the limit for that particular flour.

Two Flours Tested Side by Side

Here I tested out the hydration capacity of Kirkland Signature Organic All-Purpose Flour and King Arthur Bread Flour side by side.

I had five bowls for each kind of flour. Each bowl contained 20g of flour. I used a precision scale, but this isn’t necessary. The hydration levels were:

65% (20g flour, 13g water)
70% (20g flour, 14g water)
75% (20g flour, 15g water)
80% (20g flour, 16g water)
85% (20g flour, 17g water)

Each bowl was kneaded briefly, then left to sit for several hours. I inspected them after the initial kneading, later in the day, and again the next day. Each piece was stretched and shaped into a ball, and prodded plenty.

Conclusion:

Kirkland Organic All-Purpose Flour

This AP flour seemed to find its sweet spot around 75% hydration. The dough with 80% hydration tore easily and couldn’t quite seem to build up enough gluten to hold any kind of shape. Based on this, I would stay under 80%, maybe even under 75% for Kirkland Organic All-Purpose Flour.

Interestingly enough, shortly after I performed this experiment, a well-known sourdough master, Tom Cucuzza of The Sourdough Journey shared a post of a loaf he made. He said he used 90% Kirkland Organic All-Purpose Flour, and 10% whole wheat flour, and mentioned that he thought the Kirkland flour holds 80% hydration well. I found that highly interestingly, since in my own experience Kirkland flour is optimal at not much higher than 75%, as I found in this little test, beyond dozens of other loaves I have made with this flour. However, he also mentioned, and I have also seen others talk about, how Kirkland’s Organic All-Purpose Flour can yield inconsistent results. I can only guess, but perhaps being such a large chain with stores across the country, maybe they’re sourcing wheat from many different areas and fields, and thus, differing results. Their bags mention they are “mininum 11.5%” protein content, so presumably, some bags may contain higher protein and be able to hold those higher hydrations better, as some bakers have found.

King Arthur Bread Flour

The King Arthur Bread Flour did better at 80% hydration. It only started to lose its shape and show more signs of tearing at 85% hydration. Based on this, I would say the King Arthur Bread Flour can comfortably go up to 80%, perhaps a bit higher, but would need some high-protein flour mixed with it to go higher with good results, perhaps some King Arthur Sir Lancelot flour. I don’t normally prefer eating breads with hydration higher than 80% because of the larger holes.

Why Increase Sourdough Hydration?

Sourdough made with higher hydration is usually made for its open, lacey crumb. This particular structure is harder to achieve and thus one of the signs that “you’ve made it” in the sourdough world. While desirable aesthetically, many people (including myself) prefer a tighter crumb.

If you’re hoping for an open crumb or just want to play with a higher hydration for the fun of it, the method described in this post is a much easier way to test how much water your particular flour can hold rather than just making whole loaves and potentially having them not turn out, wasting time and ingredients.

Hydration Test Gone to Starter

Inadvertently, I left these bowls on the counter in nice summer weather for 2-3 days, trying to decide what to make with them. (I hate waste, I also don’t have a lot of free time between 3 small children.)

In the delay of deciding and formulating a recipe, these dough balls starting fermenting and turning into starter! I could’ve fed them and had 10 new bowls of starter, but one can have too much starter, you know! I turned these into some loaves of bread, instead.

I made some Honey Oat Sourdough Loaves, and they turned out great. They were super tangy from all the fermenting flours from the hydration test, a touch sweet from the honey, and a bit nutty from the oats. Honestly, to this day they might be one of my favorite loaves I’ve made.

Cold Retard: Does It Matter How the Dough Is Covered?

October 22, 2024/ Jenny Morris

When it comes to the retard, or overnight slow ferment in the fridge for sourdough, you might be wondering what to put your loaves in and how to cover them.

The best practice is to put them in banneton baskets or other similar proofing baskets, but other bowls or such can be used in a pinch, as long as the dough can easily be gotten out the next morning for baking. The dough is in its final shape at this point and shouldn’t have to be pried from a container or it will lose its shape. If you have some clean linen cloths, you can line your bannetons or bowls with those.

Now what to cover them with? Plastic? That is the first guess, since you usually want food well covered to retain freshness, flavor, and moisture.

Perhaps you’ve seen some of the sourdough bakers around covering their bannetons with cloths, rather than plastic. Is there anything to it? Wouldn’t your dough dry out if you cover it with just a cloth?

Covering dough with plastic

Many, maybe even most bakers I know cover their dough for the retard with plastic. Whether it’s a large ziploc bag, a grocery bag, a shower cap, or a plastic cover made specifically for covering bread dough, there are many different ways to effectively cover your dough with plastic.

You’ll want to keep the plastic from touching the dough to avoid it sticking, but other than that use what plastic you wish. I would stick with food grade plastic since it is in such close proximity to food and runs the risk of coming in direct contact with food. For this reason I’m a little leery of shower caps since they’re made of cheap and sketchy plastic, although the ones I’ve linked are supposed to be food grade. I would also double check grocery store bags to see if they are indeed food grade.

Plastic will keep your dough moister and stickier as it keeps in all the moisture. Depending on your dough hydration level and inclusions added, this may be beneficial or detrimental to your bread.

Another important thing to keep in mind is that plastic keeps in heat better, so if your dough is very warm or is verging on over proofed, avoid using plastic so the dough can cool down quicker in the fridge. I’ve seen an instance where a baker was bulk fermenting her dough very well, but during the cold retard her loaves were still managing to over ferment. It came to her attention that her loaves were over fermenting because she was covering them with plastic in the fridge! Once she switched to a different covering, her loaves were fine.

Covering dough with cloth

Whether or not you line your bannetons with cloth, you can also choose to cover your dough with cloth. You can use an elastic linen covering, or if you line baskets with a larger square cloth, just fold it over your dough to cover.

That last option is what I do. I might be in the minority, but I find it preferable. It’s not plastic, it uses just one cloth for lining and covering the dough, and it keeps my bannetons clean all at the same time. I also don’t have to worry about retained heat and possible over-proofing. Does my dough dry out? It forms a light skin, but it doesn’t seem to affect the bake or oven spring at all. Sometimes the cloth can leave some imprints in the top of the dough as it slowly rises in the fridge, if anything is pressing down on it. As you can see in the photos below, the cloth helped to smooth out the dough where the plastic-covered dough retained signs of shaping and “clasping” more.

A big part of the success of the cloth covering will be what type of air circulation your fridge has. If the air circulation includes fans and rapid moving air, you may find your loaves dry out excessively, too much for using just cloth. I’ve seen others perform a similar experiment where their loaf that was covered in cloth turned quite stunted compared to the loaf covered in plastic.

A Side-by-Side Experiment

My fridge doesn’t seem to dry out my loaves much. I baked two loaves side-by-side, one having done its retard in plastic and the other in linen. The results were basically the same. If anything, the cloth covered loaf did a touch better, but see for yourself in the photos.

Both loaves are identical in recipe and method. The inclusions are green olives and feta. Both were shaped with the tri-fold caddy clasp method.

dough covered in linen, after 12+ hour retard

dough covered in plastic, after 12+ hour retard

plastic covered loaf on the L, linen-covered on the R

So much of baking sourdough comes down to your own environment. As usual, I would encourage you to experiment yourself. Either try a different way of covering than you normally do to see the results, or do it side-by-side as shown in this post.

More Sourdough Features:

The 5-Minute Score Method

Cold Retard: Does It Matter How the Dough Is Covered?

Adding Inclusions to Sourdough Bread

Is an Autolysis Necessary for Sourdough Bread?

Using All-Purpose Flour vs. Bread Flour in Sourdough Bread

Sourdough Terminology

New Sourdough Series

Favorite Blueberry Muffins

Jenny's Favorite Cinnamon Rolls

October 05, 2024

Adding Inclusions to Sourdough Bread

October 05, 2024/ Jenny Morris

Last updated October 8, 2024

Sourdough bread is delicious, but once you start playing with flavors and inclusions, a whole new world opens up. From cheddar jalapeño, pesto, or rosemary garlic, to double chocolate, lemon lavender or pumpkin, the options are endless.

The three main questions when it comes to inclusions are how much to add in, when to add them in, and how to add them in.

How much to add?

There is a general rule of adding not more than 20% of your flour weight in inclusions.

This is a good place to start, but certainly not where you have to stay. There is also confusion on this rule, as some say it’s 20% of the flour weight while a few say it’s 20% of the total dough weight. I actually read the latter way when I first started adding inclusions, and I must say everything turned out fine, for adding more than I was “supposed” to. Really fine, actually.

The best way to find out how much you should add is to try it out in your dough and environment with the inclusions you have in mind. You can start with 20% of flour weight, and work form there. Too much really only exists when your loaf starts getting too flat (for your tastes) or the flavor is too strong.

I noticed from the moment I learned the 20% rule that what seemed like every. Single. Recipe for flavored sourdough included more than the 20% rule, and I was really wondering why have a rule at all if everyone is going to break it anyway?

Cheddar Jalapeño with different percentage inclusions

I’ve played around with different percentages and found that I like 30% of flour weight. Anything above 30%, and my loaves start to get flatter than I prefer. Lower than 30%, and I don’t get enough of the inclusions. I like to use Kirkland’s (Costco) all-purpose flour (protein 11.5%) because it is organic, but I could probably push the inclusion percentage a bit more if I were to use King Arthur’s Bread Flour (protein content 12.7%). Stronger flours and lower hydrations can help hold more inclusions.

As with anything sourdough, there are many variables that go into this conclusion, so you’re welcome to try out 30% but also don’t be surprised if that’s not your favorite. It depends on what the inclusions are, how strong your flour is, how well the loaves are fermented, etc.

For some visuals, I baked off 4 different loaves, all cheddar jalapeño, but each with a different percentage of inclusions. First I went all out and did 48% and 36%, then another batch with 35% and 30%. I love lots of cheese in my bread, so didn’t prefer to go below 30%.

First batch with 48% and 36%:

Second batch with 35% and 30%:

Scoring to help differentiate between loaves: a wheat stalk with 3 spikes on each side and one with five on each side, for 35%. The 30% loaf had just one wheat stalk with three spikes.

It’s fairly easy to see the dough with the most inclusions is the flattest, while the dough with the least is the highest.

When to add in inclusions?

Inclusions can be added at 3 points, really. Which one you choose depends largely on what you are adding.

They can be mixed in right when you mix your dough.
This is best for smaller amounts or lighter inclusions, such as citrus zest, extracts, sugar, cocoa powder, etc. Heavier inclusions such as cheese chunks or even spices like cinnamon can have a negative effect on the bulk fermentation and it’s best to wait.
They can be added during bulk fermentation (during stretch and folds or coil folds)
I often do 4 sets of stretch and folds and find the sweet spot for adding in inclusions is the 2nd or 3rd set. This gives them time to get decently incorporated while still giving the dough a leg up in bulk fermentation. When I have too many things going and don’t get the inclusions added in until the 4th stretch and fold, the inclusions don’t get dispersed quite as well.
They can be added in during the shaping.
If you do a pre-shape, you can add them in then. If not, then you can add them in while you fold and roll your dough into its final shape, before placing it in its banneton.

For a small example of what it looks like to add inclusions in at different times and how that affects the final loaf, here are two loaves of pesto bread.

One has mixed the pesto in right at the beginning, with all the other ingredients.

The other, the pesto is laminated in instead of doing a 4th set of stretch and folds.

Lamination created a bit of a swirl effect, but it was harder to work with. Any time the oily pesto would pop through during shaping, the dough wouldn’t want to hold its shape, and it was difficult to shape it with the proper surface tension. You can see that I had difficulty shaping it by it’s slightly flatter profile, compared to the other loaf.

Mixing pesto in at the beginning creates a loaf with pesto evenly distributed, and was much easier to work with. In fact, the oil in the pesto getting mixed straight in even made the crumb a bit more tender, and was really lovely.

Taste overall was very similar, but for ease of making and the extra tender crumb, I would definitely just mix pesto straight in at the beginning rather than laminating.

While this is certainly not indicative of all inclusions, it’s a small insight into when and how you add inclusions can affect the final loaf.

How to Incorporate Inclusions?

How you incorporate inclusions depends on when you add them.

If making a chocolate espresso loaf, for example, you’d just mix in cocoa powder and espresso at the same time you’re kneading everything else together for your dough.

Otherwise, for chunkier things like cheese, fruit, etc, you can add them in during stretch and folds/coil folds as mentioned above or you can laminate them in.

To add during stretch and folds:

Start by sprinkling about a 1/4 of the inclusions over your dough in the bowl, then performing one stretch and fold/coil fold, stretching dough over inclusions and gently pressing dough into dough in other side to seal it shut. Sprinkle another 1/4 of inclusions on top and repeat a stretch and fold. Continue two more times until all inclusions have been added and each side has been stretched and folded.

If performing coil folds, it’s a similar idea, adding a little at a time while you pick up and coil your dough down, doing your best to get the inclusions evenly dispersed.

To add during lamination:

Lamination is a technique used in sourdough to strengthen the dough and is a great time to add in inclusions.

Spreading pesto over dough before folding back up

Start by lightly misting a clean workspace, then stretching the dough in as large and thin a rectangle as you can, being careful not to tear the dough. Evenly sprinkle inclusions over dough, then fold dough several times to get a tight and neat little ball again.

Lamination is my favorite way to get evenly distributed inclusions. I enjoy the lamination process, but it does take a bit extra work to clean a work space before and after rather than just adding the inclusions straight into the bowl with the dough for a stretch and fold. Lamination also isn’t as friendly when working with large batches of dough.

Tips for success when adding inclusions:

Play around with the percentage you like. It might not be the same for all inclusions!
If your loaf is going flat, you might have exaggerated with the amount of inclusions. Otherwise, rule out any other factors such as a weak starter, under or over fermented dough, lack of proper gluten development, lack of proper shaping, etc.
Using a stronger flour (higher protein content) can help to hold inclusions better.
Keep in mind that some inclusions will add moisture to your dough. You may want to lower dough hydration accordingly. I find great success with lowering hydration to under 70% when working with heavier and wetter inclusions such as cheese and fruit.
Some inclusions will affect the fermentation. Fruit and sugar will cause dough to ferment faster, so start checking your dough earlier than you normally would.
Try to keep inclusion chunks away from the outside of the dough when it bakes, otherwise they can burn. This is especially true of sugary things like fruit, dried fruit, chocolate chips, etc. You can help this by simply sticking any outside pieces back under and into the dough when doing the pre and/or final shape.
I would recommend against using silicone bread slings for sourdough with any kind of messy inclusions, and stick with parchment paper. The slings are designed to just barely cover the bottom of loaves, avoiding leaving any kind of indentations on the bread. However, the edges of the loaf then often come into contact with the dutch oven, which can bake cheese, fruit juices, etc. right onto your dutch oven. Not fun to clean. Using parchment paper will skip the mess and keep your dutch ovens cleaner.

If you've read this far:

The 5-Minute Score Method

Cold Retard: Does It Matter How the Dough Is Covered?

Adding Inclusions to Sourdough Bread

Is an Autolysis Necessary for Sourdough Bread?

Using All-Purpose Flour vs. Bread Flour in Sourdough Bread

Sourdough Terminology

New Sourdough Series

Favorite Blueberry Muffins

Jenny's Favorite Cinnamon Rolls

September 28, 2024

Is an Autolysis Necessary for Sourdough Bread?

September 28, 2024/ Jenny Morris

When I first started making sourdough loaves at home, I wanted to have as much success as possible right from the get go, so I started by using as many techniques and tricks as I could, rather than starting with a basic recipe and adding in techniques as needed. Spoiler alert, my bread wasn’t perfect, and I ended up working in the opposite direction. Rather than adding in more things to make my bread better, I started taking out certain steps and techniques one by one, to see if they were really serving their purpose, or just wasting my time.

One such technique was the autolyse method. Some of the people I respect most in the sourdough world use an autolysis. So I did, too. It wasn’t until one day, reading another respected sourdough person who went off on a bit of a rant, that they claimed that autolyse isn’t necessary, and in fact they do not recommend it. As they said, autolysis is a process developed and intended for breads made with commercial yeast, whose rise time is shorter and would benefit from an autolysis. Since sourdough bread has much longer fermentation times, autolysis isn’t as beneficial, or so this person was saying. I haven’t been able to locate any one reliable source that states anything as clearly as “autolysis was developed for commercial bread products and yeast, not so much sourdough”, but let’s run with it for the purpose of this mini experiment.

This intrigued me, and in a way, relieved me. I’ve heard many a baker explain and laud the praises of an autolysis, and yet, I secretly did not enjoy the autolysis process. It just felt…cumbersome. Adding on more time. Harder to mix the dough. More on that later.

King Arthur has an interesting article on using an autolysis, including experiments with both sourdough and instant yeast. Their article tends to give confirmation toward an autolysis being the most beneficial for commerical yeast over sourdough.

On the other hand, Maurizio of The Perfect Loaf does a similar experiment, but with his loaves showing a marked difference with autolyse. He also really gets more into the science of autolysis and explains it very well.

What is an autolysis?

Autolysis (noun) - Autolyse (verb)

Simply, an autolysis is simply mixing flour and water together and letting them sit for a period of time. The water helps to activate some of the enzymes in the flour, developing gluten, before adding other ingredients which can have an effect on gluten. Adding salt “tightens” the dough, and adding the starter commences fermentation. When just flour and water are combined, they are free to act in a way they otherwise wouldn’t when salt and starter are present.

While I had already been wanting to experiment and see what the difference might be between a loaf that got an autolysis and one that didn’t, I felt spurred into action when that knowledgeable sourdough person said they don’t recommend autolysis. Now I knew that, should I decide to not always faithfully autolyse, I wouldn’t be alone in that camp.

I’ve now done this experiment two separate times. In my first experiment the result didn’t feel overly conclusive to me, as there were several other factors going on that affected the fermentation and bake. It didn’t feel safe to say one way or another if the autolysis was the reason for the differing outcomes, but now that I’ve done this experiment twice, I feel a little safer in sharing my results.

Before we finally get into my little mini experiment, a couple of things to note:

Sourdough is highly dependent on environment, ingredients, etc. so while I hope you find the results below interesting and informative, I would encourage you to do your own experiments for your own kitchen environment!
The results below are tested solely on unbleached white flours. One of the benefits of autolysis is that it can help break down bran, so may show more benefits in breads that use some percentage of whole grain flours.

Autolyse vs No Autolyse #1

Method:

Both loaves were made with 100% Kirkland organic all-purpose flour, 71% hydration, 1.6% salt, 20% starter.
For the autolyse loaf, water and flour were mixed together and let rest for 1 hour before adding in salt and starter.
For the No-autolyse loaf, all ingredients were mixed together.
Both loaves got 3 sets of stretch & folds
Autolyse loaf temped at 74°F, while No-autolyse loaf was at 77°F after the 1st set of stretch & fold and 75°F by the end of all stretch & folds.
Both loaves bulk fermented for 8 hours, pre-shaped for 35 minutes, then final shape for 35 minutes before into fridge for cold retard overnight.
Both loaves were baked in dutch ovens in oven preheated to 450°F for 35 minutes with lid on.

Observations:

Mixing the Flour and Water for the autolysis is not my favorite. I don’t enjoy using the autolysis technique when making bread for this reason. Unless working with high hydration doughs, which I don’t often go higher than 75%, it takes a few minutes to adequately mix the flour and water. Usually a bit of water is reserved from the autolysis to help mix in the salt after the autolysis is done. This means you’re mixing the dough without it having its full hydration, thus a stiffer dough. Then after autolyse, trying to mix just salt, a bit of water, and starter into an already formed and fairly stiff dough is not easy and may not get mixed in as well.

The Autolyse Loaf gets an advantage in gluten development. Because of the thorough mixing just mentioned above in order to incorporate all ingredients after the autolysis, the dough gets a leg up in gluten development. The No-autolyse loaf dough comes together easily and thus doesn’t require the same amount of mixing. During the stretch & folds this was quite apparent, with the Autolyse dough already showing good gluten-development and the No-autolyse loaf still being quite loose and elastic. By the end of the third stretch & fold set, however, the doughs felt quite similar; the No-autolyse loaf had mostly caught up.

Despite Bulk Fermentation starting at the same time for both doughs, they were not the same temperature. The reason for this is simple, and I really should’ve taken this into account for this experiment. I was using water that was slightly warmer than room temperature. When the bulk of the water is added for an autolysis, the time the dough is resting allows the water to cool to room temp, so by the time you add the starter and bulk ferment starts, everything is nicely at room temperature. Without doing an autolysis, the warmer water is added right in with the starter and all other ingredients, so the dough and bulk ferment temperature starts a bit warmer, although it will inevitably cool to room temperature over time. Because of this, my doughs had differing temperatures and thus different projected bulk ferment times.

Both loaves slightly over-fermented. Using the wisdom and work of Tom Cucuzza from the Sourdough Journey, I usually reference his chart for bulk fermentation times and rise %, although my starter does tend to ferment slightly faster than said chart. Despite my (even written down) projected bulk ferment times for each dough and times to start checking them, time got away from me and my three young children were needing me. By the time I was able to get to the dough it was already almost 2 hours after when I had originally planned to start checking the dough, and 1 hour after the realistic time of when it probably would have been ready. I pre-shaped both doughs at the same time since they were both already slightly over, with the No-autolyse being a little more over-fermented than the Autolyse dough.

Conclusion:

Despite some of the above noted variables, I loosely concluded that including an autolysis did not provide a noticeable difference in end product due to over-fermenting the dough. I decided to repeat this experiment, and specifically to get the doughs fermenting at the same temperature with a better targeted bulk ferment so it might be more obvious the effect of autolyse on the crumb rather than fermentation problems.

Autolyse vs. No-Autolyse Experiment #2

Method:

Both loaves were made with 100% Kirkland organic all-purpose flour, 71% hydration, 1.6% salt, 20% starter.
For the autolyse loaf, water and flour were mixed together and let rest for 1 hour before adding in salt and starter.
For the No-autolyse loaf, all ingredients were mixed together.
Both loaves received 2 sets of stretch & folds.
Autolyse Loaf temped at 77°F at beginning of bulk ferment, 75°F by end of second set of stretch & folds, then 76°F again at end of bulk ferment.
No-Autolyse Loaf temped at 76°F at beginning of bulk ferment, 75°F by end of second set of stretch & folds, then 78°F by end of bulk ferment.
Both loaves bulk fermented for a total of 6 hours 10 minutes. Autolyse loaf had a rise of approximately 70% while the Autolyse loaf rose approximately 45-50%. (Very much eyeballing that, so take that with a grain of salt.)
Both loaves were pre-shaped and rested for 20 minutes, then final shape into bannetons, rested 10 minutes, and into fridge for cold retard overnight.
Both loaves were baked in dutch ovens in oven preheated to 450°F for 35 minutes with lid on.

Autolyse Loaf (wheat design to mimic an "A" for Autolyse, if you will

No-Autolyse Loaf, wheat design mimicking an "n"

Observations:

Intersetingly, temperatures varied quite a bit between the 2 loaves. Despite being very careful this time around to use all ingredients at room temperature, the temperature varied not only between the two loaves but also at different times. Sure, it’s late summer so my kitchen ends up a few degrees warmer by mid and end of day, but the two loaves did not reflect this consistently. This leaves me with more questions unanswered than answered.

Why did the Autolyse Loaf end up 1 degree warmer still at start of bulk ferment? You would think, if perhaps the water from the measuring cup I was using was 1 degree warmer, the 1 hour that the dough sits to autolyse would be more than enough to bring the dough to room temperature. And IF the water was 1 degree warmer, the No-Autolyse Loaf would have ended up the 1 degree warmer since it gets all of its water at the beginning of bulk ferment. Not to mention, I used a large measuring cup of water, measured out for the Autolyse Loaf, and that water also sat out on the counter for an hour. It doesn’t get any more room temperature than that!

Moreso, why did the No-Autolyse Loaf end up a few degrees warmer by end of bulk ferment? The two bowls were side by side, no drafts or sun or any other factor that I am aware of would have heated up or cooled down one dough over the other. The Autolyse Loaf maintained temperature at 76°F while the No-Autolyse Loaf increased temperature by 3 degrees during bulk ferment. Fascinating. Its rise clearly reflected the warmer temperature, as it was significantly puffier than the Autolyse Loaf.

Despite the difference in rise % between the two loaves, I ended bulk ferment at the same time. I was trying to maintain absolute consistency between these loaves in method, rather than guessing different bulk ferments, pulling them at different times based on rise, temperature, and time. The bulk ferments were intended to be identical after all, as the doughs were made identically save autolyse, but the temperature fluctuations threw me for a loop!

The crumb ended up quite similar. Noting the difference in rise % and temperature between the two doughs, they still ended up with a very similar crumb. Reading the crumb and trying to ignore that information, I would not have guessed that.

Crumbshot, No-Autolyse Loaf on left, Autolyse loaf on Right

The Autolyse Loaf ended up with a slightly wonky shape. While overall I don’t think it has too much bearing on this experiment, it still bears noting. As you can see in the overhead shot of the Autolyse Loaf both before and after baking, its shape is not symmetrical. This is possibly due to shaping error, or also likely, the linen lining the banneton was pressing into the dough on one side and left an impression. I tend to think this caused the rise during the cold retard to more easily expand on the side where the linen wasn’t holding it down.

Conclusion:

Four loaves of bread is hardly conclusive. Again, and always with sourdough, there are variabilities. My home kitchen is not temperature controlled, sometimes life and children pull me away, among so many other nuances. However, I still enjoyed this experiment and thought you might find it interesting as well, so I thought it still worth sharing.

Overall, I think I will find myself skipping autolysis more often now, but will still include it in some instances.

Happy baking, friends!

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