- Moin and Guten Tag. I'm excited because I feel today the dough game is strong. Are you also as obsessed
as I am by creating a lot of ovenspring and having that beautiful
ear during the bake. If you are then you wanna make sure that you step up your dough proofing game. With proper proofing, you will go from a lot
of flatbread like this to beautiful ovenspring. But first to get your
appetite a little bit going let's have a look at the bread that we will have at
the end of this video. (soft music) Now I will be having a look at shaping a sourdough
bread and then afterwards, I will guide you through
the whole proofing process. And for proofing there
are different strategies which I will also be
discussing in this video. I'll be showing you the
shaping process as well because I feel it's an essential part to make sure that your dough
holds together very well. Now you also don't want to
shape your dough too tight, because that means that you would be degassing your dough depending on how tight you
shape you will either have smaller pockets of air
or larger pockets of air inside of your bread, which are also called raveoli. What large bakeries will do is they will both ferment their dough and then they will cut their
dough into smaller pieces. This is called preshaping. Now you will end up with squares or not round looking pieces of dough. That's why you have to appreciate. Being a hobby baker however, I just bake one dough at the same time and then you can just skip
that preshaping process. Now if you feel that
you have too big pockets of air inside of your dough, which in my opinion is always something very beautiful to have large pockets of air, good signs of fermentation then you might wanna consider preshaping. But it's also relatively
difficult to do and challenging especially if you start with baking. And that's the reason why
I'm going to skip that and go into shape my dough
directly out of the container. And enough talking now let's
get started with the shaping. This is the dough that
I've been fermenting for around six hours. It's relatively warm, so fermentation is a
little quicker than usual. As you can see some nice pockets of air and let's get started and just shape this dough. Just going to flip this container over and hopefully it will come right out. That's a sign that you
build enough strength and your dough is not over fermented. (glass clanks) Voila Now I just like to tuck a
little more flour below. And now what I will do is
I will just take this dough and fold it over itself like this, don't tuck it down too much else you are losing some
of that precious air that you have added to your dough. I'm talking this down now so
that this sticks together. Now I will rotate this
put some more flour below and I will just start
rolling this dough up push inside roll good looking though, just
only going to seal this I feel that makes it a little more beautiful though, okay. Turn this around. And one thing I use a little more flour that makes the shaping a little bit easier but then this makes this a little harder. All right, so this is the dough. After shaping I'll like to
cover it in a plastic bag which keeps the whole dough hydrated. Now the dough is not ready we
have to wait until it proofed. And now after shaping the
proofing stage starts. If you have done everything
right until this moment then you also have to master this stage. It's essential for giving
you that ovenspring and that ear in the end
during the baking process. And I will now be discussing
four different options for different proofing techniques. Now each method has their
advantages and disadvantages which I will also be discussing. First up method number one that's the room temperature proofing. This is probably the
easiest and most ancient way how bread has been proofed. This method is very
simple and works very well for those that are not
that high in water content. So what you pretty much do is
after shaping you just leave your dough at room temperature. You use your finger to determine whether your dough proofed enough. At the start after shaping the dough is still relatively stiff because you created all that strength. Over time your dough is
going to inflate more and then you can use your finger to measure how much your
dough actually inflated. You just take your finger
and you poke into the dough. Look out for a dent. That dent should very very
very slowly recovering then your bread has proofed. If your bread is not proofed enough, then that dent is going to recover very very quickly. If your bread has over proofed, well then that dent stays in there. If you over proofed you screwed up. If you did not proof long enough, you're not going to get
that ovenspring as well. So it's really about
hitting that sweet spot. It sounds so simple, but yeah,
just finger poke your dough that's going to make
such a big difference. Now what I personally don't
like about this method is it works very well for
rather stiff doughs. Now if you want to increase
your dough hydration then you will have an issue in the end when you want to bake your bread because it's very hard to score a bread which is at room temperature. And this method assumes that your dough is all the
time at room temperature. If you have a rather stiff dough then this is definitely a great option. When your dough pass the finger
poke test directly bake it. Now this brings me to option number two, which is very different. You take your dough and
you proof your dough in the fridge for around 18 to 24 hours. Now how long definitely
depends on the temperature inside of your fridge and it
even depends on which level you put your dough into the fridge. This is a great way because you can also choose the moment when you
want to bake your bread. With the room temperature finger poke test you have to bake your bread right away. With the fridge technique it doesn't matter really if it's one hour or two hours later. That's because the fermentation activity is still quite active at the start, but over a period of time, it almost becomes completely zero. Now there's a big difference between six degrees Celsius and
four degrees Celsius. That's something I
definitely learned myself. I recommend you to try 18 hours frost and set off your fridge. And then if you feel
it's not proofed enough, you don't get enough ovenspring, try 24 hours inside of your fridge. What I don't like about this method is that it's very hard to say whether your dough is
actually done proofing or not. For sure you can look at did
it increase in size or not. But still with the finger poke test it's so much easier you
just poke your dough and you know it's ready. And this leads me to number three, which is the method which I developed which is you take your dough, you proof it at room temperature and you do the finger poke test. Now, shortly before your dough
passes the finger poke test you take your dough and you
move your dough to the fridge. You move your dough to the fridge for another eight hours approximately. This way you know your dough is definitely ready after eight hours. And you also saw okay, the fermentation has been
going according to plan. The downside of this is that well, if you wait longer than eight hours, you don't have that room like you have on the fridge strategy, you can easily over-ferment your dough. Also, those eight hours
depend a lot on your fridge. This is just a recommendation
from my fridge, which is around six degrees Celsius on top and four degrees Celsius
near the bottom area. So what I typically do
is before going to bed, I proof my dough and
then I might go to bed and then eight hours later or so I already have the oven
preheated in the morning, and that's when I'm
going to bake my bread. This really helped me to bake
better results consistently. This is typically my method of choice. Yeah summing it up it's
combining the best of both worlds room temperature proofing
and the cold proofing. One thing to also enter the equation when it's colder, your fermentation produces
different enzymes. And this means when proofing cold, it could be that the taste
is different of your bread. This is also something to consider. So how do you want your taste to develop? So there's one more method, method number, sorry, method number four
and that's the method somebody of you suggested
to me in the comments. And this method is a little
bit simpler than the fridge because what you do is you just proof your dough
at room temperature. And then in the end, when your dough almost
passed the finger poke test what you do is you take your dough, and you place it in the
freezer for another 30 minutes. I gotta say this sounds pretty cool because I feel it's also going to combine the best of both worlds. You can bake your dough almost directly, and you can control the
fermentation process and feel how it progressed
with your finger. So I already tested in my fridge, it's around minus 20 degrees Celsius. So the pros of this method are you can definitely bake
your bread way faster in comparison to the fridge method. However, a possibly negative side could be that you're not developing that
flavor that you would like. However, this is also
a personal preference. So in the end, yes, there's
a lot of techniques. Let's put the last method which I never tried to the test and let's have a look whether this is going to work out or not. I'm really hoping for
some great ovenspring. And this is the dough after I shaped it. Just use your finger and poke
your finger into the dough and you will see that this then almost instantly springs back. So this dough is not yet ready. It still requires more proofing. I know that in my case,
depending on my setup this dough is ready after around two hours. But this really depends
on your environment. So I would recommend you to check this once every 15 minutes. And that's what I'll be doing next, I will be showing you how
this dough develops over time. It's actually been a little
more than 15 minutes, it's been 30 minutes, but
let's have another look. Try to use an area where there's
some flour and you can see how that still springs back very fast. So I would say most important is the first start of the springing back because there remains a little
bit of a dent that's okay. But you can see how fast
this is still going back here and in a minute or so this dent is going to be completely done. So yeah, still needs some more time. Oh, well, it's been another hour, not 50 minutes, I guess. Well, you have to make the process work if you're just a hobby baker right. So yeah, let's have a look at the dough and see how well it proofed by now. It definitely already
expanded quite a lot. I'm just putting some flour on my finger. Yeah, I feel this is already very close. I would already feel comfortable
in baking this I think. Let's try one more time. Let's try here. Yes, you see this dent space right? You see how much those dents stay? I would be comfortable
with baking this now. So yeah, so what I will
be doing now is then I will proceed and I will
do the freezer trick. And yes, I've waited for another minute and you can see that those
dents are still in there. So this is definitely good. This is definitely proofed. So yeah, finger poke test says
please bake this right now. So one more time the freezer trick. We're now going to take this and we will put this into our freezer and this way the outside
of the dough is cooled down and that's going to make it
a little easier to score. Now I would say there's a time window of maybe 30 minutes or so
until over-proofing. If I were to be baking
this room temperature I might wait another 50 minutes. Definitely by now I would turn on the oven. So yes, let me put this into
the freezer for 30 minutes and while it's being put into the freezer, I will already be starting my oven. I'm gonna make this one
inside of a Dutch oven. So yeah, that also needs some pre heating. I will do that right now. Fridge temperature is minus 26 Celsius and now the dough temperature is this. I'm really wondering what's going to happen within 30 minutes. Bye bye Mr. Dough. While we are waiting, I
got a bread show for you. What do you call a grumpy bread? Sourdough, okay, I'm out of here, whoops. Come out here and it didn't
increase that much more in size and surface temperature
is a grown 10 degrees. So that cool down not that
much, but quite a bit. I'm sure it's gonna be
easier to score now. Okay, I'm confident. All right, I like this technique. I just placed the Dutch oven on here I can just flip this around. This is very gentle on the dough. This is a great way to use a Dutch oven. I'm using a Dutch oven, but there's also other
steaming techniques. I'm going to be linking one right here. Now it's time to score our bread. So this is looking good. We can correct it just
a little bit perfect. I'm now going to close the Dutch oven, close it and I like to
just spray in a little more more water, more water for extra steam. And bear with me I'm gonna be showing
you the result in a bit. One more side note, now that you did your proofing just right, this is where everything comes together. And to get that extra bit of ovenspring, it's essential to have a lot of steam during the first half of the bake. That's around 20 to 25 minutes depending on your setup. And as I said, there's really
no need to get a Dutch oven you can do everything with your home oven. It's just that a Dutch oven
makes it a little bit easier from time to time to bake, but yeah, you can definitely bake amazing sourdough without a Dutch oven without investing in expensive equipment. While we are waiting,
just a quick explanation, you might have noticed that all my videos I'm always saying Moin. And just a quick background
info of what this is about. This is actually the greeting that we're using in the
northern part of Germany. We say Moin you can also say Guten Tag, which means good day, but Moin is a typical greeting for the northern part of Germany. And we would never say Moin Moin some people come to Hamburg
and they say Moin Moin but nope, we Hamburgans
are very very distant and we would never say a word too much. So we just say Moin. So if you're coming to Germany next time, try using Moin and some people, they will think you are from the north. One thing though, which I love about
baking using a Dutch oven you always have this
one moment of excitement during half the bake where
you open the Dutch oven and it's either an epic fail
or it's a great success. Drumroll are you as excited as I am? Its been 25 minutes. So let's have a look, the moment of truth. And whoo yeah (laughs) amazing. Look at that nice ear wow. (soft music) This unfortunately brings
us to the end of this video. I hope you learned something
new, I definitely did. It's been a lot of fun. Happy baking and may the
gluten always be with you.
