Secondly, folding dough redistributes our yeast and its food, making sure each little Cookie Monster gets its fill. Also, folding dough helps to regulate its temperature, keeping it consistent through its mass. Together, these two consequences of folding regulate yeast activity, and help our dough stay on schedule. To perform a fold, start by wetting your dough spatula and hands with water. Then, gently scrape around the edges of the bowl to prevent sticking, and make a clean fold possible.
Without tugging, pull the side farthest from you up and towards you, and fold your dough in half. Give the bowl a quarter turn, then perform the same motion again. Give the bowl a half turn, and repeat the same motion. Lastly, pull the unfolded side of your dough carefully up from the bottom, and pull it up and over to form a neat package, like so. All the while, allow the dough to stretch itself—your hands are just assistants.
Performing these motions too aggressively may tear the gluten, making the process counter-productive. The dough should now feel taught but pillowy, and have a spring to the touch. Also, you'll notice that the dough is far less sticky than before, mostly because gluten is AMAZING, and does all sorts of useful things with water and air.
Re-cover the bowl and have a cocktail. Our second fold will be performed about half an hour later, when the creases from our first fold have melded together, showing us that our gluten network has relaxed and is ready to be re-stretched. With this second fold we want to be very careful not to push too hard on our dough, or we might de-gas it and undo a lot of the work done by the yeast and ourselves thus far.
Don't shake the baby—every bit of gas counts. In the event you do squash your dough a bit, don't worry about it too much. Just be extra careful during shaping to treat your dough gently. These things take practice.
You will still have delicious bread. Re-re-cover the bowl and have another beer, or two, cause it will be most of an hour before we disturb our dough again.
Check your dough after another 45 minutes or so. Wet your hand and gently push on the dough surface. Feels dense? Go watch the Daily Show, and come back in a half hour. More rising time is just fine so long as we don't just up and forget about it. Feels really dense? Move it to a warmer part of your kitchen. The dough should feel like a waterbed, pillowy and with some spring, but your finger should leave a slight imprint.
Is it there yet? You're ready to divide the dough, which is the first step towards shaping your very own loaves. To divide the dough, lightly flour the top with AP flour, scrape around the sides with your dough spatula to free it from the bowl and quickly flip the bowl upside down.
The dough should flop out in one large blob, and what was at the bottom of the bowl should now be on top. It'll also be really sticky. This is good, like so:. Lightly flour your hands, bench knife, and the counter top on which you will be shaping.
With your bench scraper, decisively cut the dough in half, pushing the halves away from each other with the bench knife, making sure to keep the bench knife's blade firmly flush with your counter's surface. Pre-shaping is all about giving your dough a heads-up about what shape it's going to be later, and giving the gluten a little time to get situated.
Think of it as a dress-rehearsal for the big show. For us, our final shape is going to be round—a boule—and so our pre-shape is going to be round as well. To pre-shape, we're going to perform a series of folds similar to what we did during the bulk rise. We want to do this in as few motions as possible, making those motions decisive and clean, without being aggressive. It'll look something like this:.
Once you've folded your dough into a neat little package, gently flip it over with your bench knife to let the smooth side face you. For the moment this is the top of our loaf-to-be. The place where the different sides of the dough meet and meld is our seam, which should end up on the bottom.
Like this:. Most important here, is to not over-think this. Just try to get some tension on the surface of the loaf. If we mess with it too much now we're just going to push our hard-earned gas out of it. Pre-shapes—like rehearsals—aren't meant to be perfect. Lightly flour the tops of the rounds and cover with a towel. Allow the pre-shaped loaves to hang out on the bench for a while—anywhere between fifteen and forty minutes will do the trick.
By letting the tension we built during our pre-shape relax, we'll be able to create even more tension during our final shape, all without tearing the surface of the loaf.
This helps make big, beautiful bread. This is our bench rest. While this is happening, we should ready our proofing baskets or bowls, which will help support the structure of our loaves during their final proof. Start by choosing something the right size. These are going to be big loaves of bread, but we don't want to get crazy. The proofing baskets—called bannetons—that I use at home and at The Cleveland are made specifically for 1.
If you don't have bannetons use a medium serving bowl or colander, the size vessel you might use to serve potatoes for four during dinner. Once shaped, our loaves should fill the basket a little more than halfway, which will leave adequate room for the final rise. To ready your baskets, choose two large kitchen towels made of smooth cloth.
Don't use anything fuzzy unless you plan to eat that fuzz—it will stick to the bread. Using rice flour although plain old AP flour will work fine, just go a little heavier , brush the towels with a light-to-medium coating of flour. We don't want to go too light or the loaves will stick; too heavy and we'll be eating clumps of burnt flour off our crusts.
Place the towels in the proofing baskets or bowls and go about your business. We're making what's called a boule: a big, round loaf. That means that our final shape will be the same as our pre-shape. We know our loaves are ready for final shaping when giving a gentle tug on the rounds shows some stretch and does not immediately pull back.
Take a look:. Once our dough has shown us that it's ready to be shaped, flip the rounds so the seam side is now facing up again, and once again perform the folds listed above, gently developing tension along the rounds' surface. Use flour to keep the dough from sticking to you and the bench, but not so much that the dough won't stick to itself. Too much flour will keep our seams from holding, or will show up as clumps of unincorporated flour after baking.
It's best to just flour your hands and scrape underneath the loaves with your bench knife to prevent sticking. Once you've folded your dough appropriately, cup your hands together and pull the dough towards you to generate tension along the boule's exterior, rotating the boule a quarter turn between pulls. Like with the pre-shape, we want to use as few motions as possible. If the dough surface begins to rip, you're pulling a little too hard. It's not a disaster. Just stop.
Remember: We're proofing our boules in round containers. All the little imperfections will smooth out there. Even more to the point, shaping bread isn't fine art. We're going to eat it. Shaping is about tension and structure, not aesthetic perfectionism. Let the rounds rest seam-side-down for just a minute or so to make sure the seam holds together. Then, using your bench scraper with a quick, firm motion, flip the boules carefully into the baskets, making sure the seam side is facing up. What's facing up in the basket will become the bottom of our loaves once they're baked.
Cover the boules in the baskets with towels and place them in the fridge, where they will undergo their final fermentation, or final proof. During this time, the loaves should nearly double in size. Proofing our loaves in the fridge also called retarding will slow down their final rise, giving our loaves more flavor.
Also, retarding loaves during their final proof makes them easier to handle and score before baking, which will improve the crumb, crust, and appearance of our baked loaves. And with that, it's time to begin preheating our ovens and talk about how to bake all of this hard work into something beautiful. But that conversation will have to wait until our next installment, which will be all about baking and scoring.
Happy proofing everyone! And keep the questions coming. Actively scan device characteristics for identification. Use precise geolocation data. At comfortable room temperature, bulk fermentation will take one to two hours.
As a rule, a warmer dough will rise faster than colder dough, so make sure you take stock of your prep environment. After punching down , kneading , folding , and stretching your dough, you will portion out the dough into serving sizes or loaves.
You get it ready for its final proof by putting it into its final shape. You can place the shaped dough into baskets, bowls, or bread pans, cover with towels, and perform a shorter second rise at room temperature or in the refrigerator. During this time, the loaves should nearly double in size.
Proofing loaves in the fridge, known as retarding , will slow down the final rise. This can give your loaves more flavor and make them easier to handle and score before baking. Over proofing occurs when a fermenting dough has rested too long, resulting in the bubbles growing so large that they pop. Dough baked at this point would result in a bread with poor structure. Under proofing can also negatively affect the structure.
If you poke the dough and it springs back immediately it is under proofed and needs more time. Some breads are considered fully proofed if the indent left by the poke springs back slowly, while others are considered fully proofed when the indent remains and does not spring back. While no special equipment is needed to proof bread, you can use items to assist during this important step of bread making:.
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