At the same time I held the pouliche (poolish) loaf in the last post here for 36 hours in order to achieve a sourer crumb, I also had this sourdough sitting alongside it for the same reason.
This dough was made mild, as per my usual sourdough loaf of 30g starter fed with 100g of flour/water. The dough was made in the same normal time with two folds, but once shaped it was held in the fridge for 36 hours. As expected at the end of that time the crumb tasted sourer than my everyday mild sourdough loaf.
- 200g levain (white roller mill)
- 400g white stoneground tybalt, organic
- 100g white roller mill (12% protein), organic
In my post here Life Cycle of a Sourdough Starter Part I, I write of Debra Wink’s explanation of how the fridge temperature acidifies the dough, her belief being that it allows for more of certain type of sugars available (in this cold temperatures) to the heterofermentative bacteria.
The cold temperature by itself doesn’t acidify the dough.
I use the fridge frequently to stall the dough for all sorts of reasons at all sorts of stages of the dough without acidifying the loaf. With the cold temperature there has to be an extended length of time given for the bacteria to acidify the dough as both they and the yeast will be on sleepy mode under those conditions, everything will be happening extremely slowly.
Manipulation can be done in order to achieve souring such as adding some wholemeal flour or rye, or as I did here having white stoneground flour. Another way is to start with a sourer levain, rather than the milder one I used with this loaf, see this post here on different fed levains.
The great fun of being a baker is discovering these manipulations with dough to achieve varying results, if we don’t experiment we might as well stop baking as far as I’m concerned.
