Proving sourdough in the fridge. What could go wrong?
Let's talk about proving sourdough in the fridge, specifically when it comes to enriched doughs!
8/23/20263 min read
Proving in the fridge: let's talk about it!
Our rustic loaves prove wonderfully in the fridge. They have 4 base ingredients (starter, water, flour, and salt), and then of course, anything else we add into them to create flavor profiles, like cheese, veggies, or herbs. We prove our jalapeno cheddar rustic loaves in the fridge for 12 hours, but we can also typically get away with a 9 to 10 hour prove in the fridge as well. They prove just as well as our rustic loaf doughs that we leave on the counter for their long prove.
But our sandwich loaves are not good candidates to prove in the fridge, at least not for the entire prove. We tried it, and there are the results! Why did this happen?
Our sandwich loaves are an enriched dough, meaning they have added fats in them. In particular, the fat we have added to our sandwich loaves is olive oil. We use olive oil to get a softer bread and a lighter crust. However, olive oil coats the gluten bonds within the dough, creating a barrier between the yeast and the starches it needs to access and consume to create the CO2 air bubbles that you need for your bread to rise! This isn't a major problem as long as you leave it for a long 12 hour prove (we usually prove ours for 16 hours to ensure it has enough time) in a room-temperature environment. If you try to add a cold environment into the mix for the entire prove (which slows down microbial activity), it will interfere even more with your proving, to the point where the dough in the picture didn't even rise!
Doughs can also be enriched with milk or butter, but all enriched doughs are not created equal. Butter actually firms up in the fridge, which prevents the same barrier for the yeast within the dough from being created. Both butter and milk also have lactose, another form of sugar that yeast and bacteria like to consume.
Does this mean all doughs with olive oil can't be proved in the fridge?
No! What is does mean is that doughs with olive oil shouldn't be proved in the fridge for the ENTIRE long fermentation period. Allow your dough to prove on the counter for the bulk of that period, and once you're seeing evidence of a good rise, if you need to buy yourself more time, you can go ahead and stick it in the fridge to finish the prove.
Here is a picture of our jalapeno cheddar sourdough compared to our white rustic loaf dough. We don't keep our jalapeno cheddar sourdough in bowls during their long prove in the fridge. We wrap them in plastic wrap to conserve space. You can see that after a 10-hour prove in these photos, our Mopsy dough looks beautiful and well-proved, whereas it's harder to tell whether the jalapeno cheddar dough is proved. Hint: it is! There is a difference in the texture that we can feel. It's more airy and light. It's just hard to tell from looks alone!
Here is also a photo of the final result, showing approximately the same rise in both doughs once they were shaped and allowed to prove for an additional hour, then baked.
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