Some Good Advice For Little To No Oven Rise In Your Breads

I was wondering about the same thing already , and here is your madscientist experiment to support my suspicion.

To get the complete picture,  at 30 degrees temp.  how long did you bulk ferment your last nice loaf?

I started baking with sourdough last winter and remember getting good oven spring for my first several loaves, except a few other things did not work ( cracking etc.). I made a lot of corrections since then, learned a lot, but then the oven spring disappeared. Good tasting loaves, no cracking, but no ovenspring. Now I can see that as time went on,  in the summer time with temps around 27 - 32 degrees, although I reduced times, still, I was bulk fermenting too long, and probably also  overprooving my loaves, since I prooved them for the same length you were indicating. . . But now we are back to heating the house ( 20 degrees), and I tend to stick the dough in the oven with the pilot light on, or else fermentation and prooving time would take forever. Which throws me off again, hopefully not for long.

Just one degree is significant with proofing times, and as home sourdough bakers we have to adjust to seasonal temperature changes all year. It can get tricky, and summer is my least favourite time for baking. As you've found, dorisw, you have to slash your proof times once the temperature gets into the 30s.

I've bulk proofed as short as one and a bit hours on very hot days, then shaped and done the final proof in the fridge. I've found it's the only way to extend the proof times in hot weather. Just bake out of the fridge next day.

Never have tried baking the same day when it's so hot, but I imagine you would lose flavour with such short proof times. However, good home baked bread always beats the supermarket rubbish.

 Interesting to know that you proove your sourdoug in the oven, then leave it in while increasing the temp to 400 degrees! During cooler temperatures ( our fall, winter, spring) I used to proove my SD in the oven with the pilot light on. But then, after it had risen, remove it from the oven while heating up to 450degrees, with a pan with water in the bottom.  Then returning the dough back to the oven once it had reached the 450 degree temp. Then after 10 min decrease to 380 degrees.  

Do you leave it at 400 degrees until its done?

Today I am baking again. I will experiment with putting the SD in the oven for prooving time and leaving it in while increasing the temps.  If it works, its going to be less hassle for me. 

I am also experimenting with adding cooked rice. Hope these are not too many experiments at once

 putting the SD in the oven for prooving time and leaving it in while increasing the temps. worked for me!

I had expected the worst.  In fact, I was prepared to use the loaves for turkey stuffing ( that's what we do with our discards). We had left in the morning, with the dough on the counter for bulk fermentation. I thought we would be back home 2 -3 hours later, but it turned into a lovely drive in the country, picking apples at a friend's farm.  When we got home 8 hours later, I feared that the SD would have risen and fallen. Not so, it was just a bit more than double in size, still looking good. I then shaped it and put it into 2  glass pans. Placed the pans in the oven at 100 degrees more or less ( my oven has no temp. indicator for this low a temp).  Within abt 45 min. the dough rose again. Then I increased the temp to 450 degrees, put in a dish with water, and the dough rose a bit  more. After 10 minutes I reduced the temperature to 380  degrees. We  could not resist, once the loaves were cool, we tasted one; certainly worth repeating! As I mentioned, I was also experimenting with  adding 1 cup of cooked brown rice. We found that the rice makes the bread nice and moist, we quite like it.