A brick, with notes
Sunday's loaf weighed 870 g, stood about six centimetres tall at its highest point, and had a crumb like a bath sponge that had been left in the sun. The crust was pale. The ear did not open; the score simply healed over, as though I had drawn on it with a finger. I cut it, looked at it for a while, and toasted it anyway, because underbaked bread is still bread and the toaster forgives a great deal.
This was the everyday loaf, the one I wrote down a fortnight ago precisely so that this sort of thing would stop happening. The recipe was not the problem. I was.
What went wrong
The heating in the kitchen has a timer, and at some point last week somebody (me) moved it so the radiator stays off until the evening. I had not noticed, because I am not in the kitchen during the day. The thermometer on the windowsill said 16 °C on Saturday afternoon. My recipe assumes 22–24 °C.
Fermentation slows roughly by half for every eight to ten degrees of cooling, which means a four-and-a-half-hour bulk at 23 °C wants something nearer seven or eight hours at 16 °C. I gave it four and three quarters, because that is what the clock said and I wanted to go out before the cloud came in. The dough had grown by perhaps fifteen per cent, not fifty. I noticed it looked a bit tight and decided it would catch up in the fridge.
It does not catch up in the fridge. The fridge is 4 °C. Nothing catches up in the fridge.
How to tell, next time
- Volume. Use a straight-sided container, mark the start level with a strip of tape, and wait for the dough to reach roughly 1.5 times that. Not the clock. The tape.
- Surface. Properly fermented dough has a domed, slightly shiny top and bubbles at the edges. Mine was flat and matt.
- Feel. A ready dough jiggles when you shake the bowl. Mine sat there like a cushion.
- Morris. He had also been slow that morning, peaking at nearly eight hours instead of six. That was the first warning, and I ignored it.
The fix
The cheap one: put the bowl in the oven with only the light on, which holds it at about 26 °C, and check every half hour. The free one: mix with water at 30 °C instead of tap-cold, which brings the dough up to around 24 °C at the start and buys an hour. The obvious one: move the heating timer back.
I baked again on Tuesday with warm water and the bowl in the oven. Five hours ten minutes to reach the tape line. The loaf was normal, which has never been so satisfying.