Hello Melissa,
I was wondering if , using the same recipe for the sourdough whole wheat bagels that I just tried, you could :
Make your levain iso that it is "ready to go " for say late afternoon ( or early evening ) and then for the build fermentation you put it in the frige overbite; the advantage being that you would have fresh bagels sometime in the morning.
Question would be : how long to in the frige ? Take out the next morning and let rise again until it is doubled as is written in the recipe ?
Thanks again for all your help…and to anyone else who has tried this recipe.
I find that sourdough doughs don’t rise rapidly in the refrigerator the way yeast doughs do. If you want an overnight refrigeration, I would let the dough get to almost double (more than 50% expansion at least) before throwing it into dormancy in the refrigerator. Because it will probably not do much expanding in the refrigerator and it’ll take a while to warm up and expand more in the morning.
Here’s a dough that I put in the refrigerator last night after it had risen to where my finger is – a few hours at room temp – not much expansion but I wanted to sleep and I’m not on a schedule with it (it’s bread to chop and freeze for Thanksgiving stuffing).
In the early morning, it was at the same finger spot, and now three hours later, it’s where you see in this pic. I’ll probably be able to shape it in an hour. (I’m aiming for less than doubling in these breads.)
