Easy daily routine

I think the key is to just try some different things. I think the Tartine methond is pretty demanding. Here is what I do;

Morning one; feed starter (this all depends on how long your starter to become ripe) 

evening one; mix dough and ferment for about an hour or so, fold and then refridgerate

After work ay two; shape proof bake-- on this day it usually takes me 4 hours total 

You can also bulk proof after mixing and proof shaped loaf instead. 

Hope this helps! 

J

Hello bakerjohn,

I was going to suggest something similar.  Evening one prepare loaf starter and develop dough.  Bulk prove in fridge overnight.  Morning shape loaf and fridge till evening.  Evening two bake (assuming loaf is sufficiently proved).

I think the secret will be to experiment to find out what works for you and your starter.

Good luck with your projects.

Farinam

You need two mornings where you start out at home, but only need a few minutes before going off to work - not much more time than brushing your teeth - and really you don't need to do anything the second morning. You also need to be home those two nights.  The evenings need around 3 hours or so clear each, for me. (when I say "clear", you need to be around but can be doing many other things at intervals.)

Morning one (before work) : mix levain from active starter (activated from fridge with several feeds over 24/36 hrs). I usually add some rye flour into this stage. Ferment this all day while you are at work. If home will be hot, I actually take the levain into the office! It's a long fermenting time so don't seed the levain with too much starter - you will figure it out for your temps, eventually.

Night one (after work). Take fermented and active levain and mix up bread dough. This is usually after kids are fed and before getting them off to bed. Say mix up at 7.30 pm or so. I do short kneads and 10 min rests, morphing into stretch and folds over longer intervals. the process can vary with whatever is going on at home. So long as you are reaonably attentive, it's a robust process - if you miss a stretch/fold, it won;t really matter! At around 10.30 pm (earlier if it's warm and dough gets puffy quickly) shape loaves and place in floured banettons (i use a mix of rye and rice flour to line banettons - they never stick with some rice flour in the mix). Into fridge inside plastic bags, to stopr drying out (four large loaves in my normal batch).

Morning two. Check loaves to see how much they continued to rise in fridge. Can give an indication of how they will be that evening - ie likely to need warm up time or likely to bake right from fridge. But this is just a progress report - the real test is at baking time later that night.

Night two. Look at the loaves on arrival home. Once you get used to how they look and feel, you can tell if they will bake OK straight out of the fridge, or will need 30, 60, 90 or even 120 mins to warm and rise some more. Assuming it's not more than 60 mins needed, turn on oven immediately and heat up stone. Remove loaves at appropriate intervals and bake ( I have a wide oven and do two lots of two loaves total 4 loaves).

Works OK for me.

I have read different things about sourness from long cool proofing. Some (many) say that it makes loaves very sour. Others say that the lactic acid-producing bacteria prefer warmer conditions, and the cool temps (relatively speaking) favour yeasts. On that basis the cool temps over a long time (slowing all processes down but generally favouring yeasts over LAB) should actually produce less sour bread. I suppose you could test for acidity/pH in the final dough, but not sure how much has been reported on this. For what it's worth, I have two kids who don't like things to be too extreme - and both like my SD made using fridge-retardation. Use of rye in the mix seems to me to produce more sourness - might be a combination of the natural flavour of the rye, plus how it affects the relative rates of growth of bugs, but I'm not certain. If you want less sour, stick to predominantly white baker's flour. Also maybe get some diastatic malt (ground up sprouted-then-dried barley), as I gather this provides amylase enzyme which assists in naturally breaking down maltose (disaccharide) into monosaccharides, and this allows the wild yeasts to break down mono's. Those yeasts (generally) will not metabolise disaccharides. A microbiologist will probably find an error in there, but that's how  understand it.

Just one tip - if you don't use rice flour in your banetton-lining mix, a long fridge retard can leave your loaves sticky and hard to get out f the banettons (from a bit of sweating at the contact skin area). This can be important, as what happens if the loaf hangs from its skin before you can tease it out  is that it can shear a bit internally - which leads to a kind of internal gap under the top crust. If I have no rice flour, one thing I do is on Morning two, way before I bake later that night, I gently roll the loaves so the sides come apart from the banetton. Then I do the same on arrival home on night two, before any (say 1 hr) final warm-up of the loaf. This "breaks the seal" and stops that last instant sticking of the finally puffy (and slightly fragile) dough at the instant of baking.

Hope that helps.