I’ve been making sourdough for a year now. I have it down to a science:
250g peak starter
725g warm water
1kilo BF
25g salt
1 hour rest then 1 S&F, 3 x coil fold 30 min apart.
I live in Arizona so temperature fluctuates dramatically during the year so I eyeball my bulk ferment. When I’m happy with it I normally keep half in a tin pan and put it in the oven with the light on to overproof for focaccia and keep one in the fridge overnight to cold proof for a loaf.
Yesterday I doubled the recipe, make two focaccia and two loaves. This morning I was surprised to find these two chonkers. They normally get a little bit more rise but never like this. The fridge door wasn’t open. The temp wasn’t any different. I can’t figure out why they kept rising.
Any ideas?
by MotherUckingShi
23 Comments
Top shelf of the fridge is the warmest place in it. It’s coldest right above the vegetable drawer.
In any case though, your dough was probably quite warm when it went in, your fridge might be generally on the warmer side, and the dough didn’t cool down fast enough.
The dough was likely too warm and continued to bulk ferment even when in the fridge.
Any chance you forgot salt?
I thought those were photography softboxes at first glance lmao
This happened to me recently and it was because my fridge was slowly dying.
Warm water and warmer than usual fermentation temperature (dough temperature was higher than usual) so the fridge took longer to cool the dough down and slow the yeast.
Check your fridge temp.
The time this happened to me it was because my fridge was on the fritz. I have a couple of fridge thermometers now
76 degrees is a warm dough and 250g starter is a lot for 1000g flour, probably 50g more than what is needed
Mother we have risen
Did you forget the salt maybe?
Did you forget salt? Also my dough did this when I didn’t close the fridge door all the way.
Possibly it was already bulked when you put it in.
It’s from Chobani
warm dough, fridge temp to high
I think the double recipe was too much extra warmth and kept the refrigerator temp warmer for a longer period of time. This resulted in more fermentation in refrigerator than your usual smaller batch.
God my eyes tricked me for a minute. I thought this was a picture of a bedroom not a fridge
This has happened to me before, culprit was I forgot the salt
Is there any chance you had more or less contents in the fridge than usual? I highly suggest one of these for the fridge. I lost some very expensive medication when my fridge died. Now my phone alerts me if the temp goes higher or lower than the parameters I set.
https://a.co/d/0gpn7Xm9
Possibly underproofed going into the fridge and/or warmer than average temp in kitchen. Keep in mind that it takes hours for your dough to get down to ambient fridge temp, roughly 10f per hour. It will be even slower putting in multiple loaves, as the cooling load will be higher.
Is your refriger usually that crowded? That makes a big difference too.
Sourdough is a chemical experiment. It’s impossible to know the amount and virility of yeast in the flour.
Sometimes it’s low sometimes it’s insane and the protein content is high.
Something similar happened to me years ago. [Here](https://i.redd.it/ki9ivi35e9n41.jpg) compressor on the refrigerator went out and that reverses the process so it heats the refrigerator instead. If yours is intermittent at the moment, very likely what happened.