You’ve clicked to read this post, so you obviously like playing with fire!
Hehe. Just kidding! 🤗
Timing is the #1 question I get asked about all the time. It can be a long journey becoming familiar with what your dough needs and when it needs it, The temperature of your kitchen plays such a big role in how your sourdough responds to life! Temperatures shift throughout the year and shift again depending on how you heat and cool your home.
Your sourdough flakes are a living, breathing thing, once mixed with water and flour. Food, time and temperature is a rhythm that takes a fair bit of experience and flour knowledge to get right.
We provide start times for each of our recipes as a guideline to help navigate the great timing/temperature dance. The start times allow the right rest period (maturing time) for each step so that your sourdough doesn’t become while you’re asleep, or at work, unable to attend to it. Following the timing and process set out for you, will help you produce successful sourdough bread.
Sure, but can I change the start time?
Yes! Of course, you can. You will just need to follow the exact same rest periods for the recipe and do a little maths to make sure the next step doesn’t occur at an inconvenient time, such as 3am if you are usually asleep at that time!
How to do it
1. Follow the recipe suited to your kitchen temperature at the time:
Cool
Moderate
Warm
2. Use the same rest periods for the recipe E.G (24 hours, 12 hours etc)
Plan ahead a little and see where this will place the next few steps to make sure it will be a convenient time for you.
Note: The majority of our recipes use 24 and 12 hour rest periods between steps, which makes it reasonably easy to calculate and using the Refrigerator Method makes, built into our recipe process, makes your baking time flexible. No more dough ready to bake when you’re not!
