Eating Healthier in Today's World

The Rising Place

Everybody's home is different, and so each baker has to play sleuth to find the warm place or the cool one where the dough can rise best.  Drafty log cabins wiht wood heat present the greatest of challenges because the heat is dry and prone to extreme ups and downs, but apartments boasting air conditioning and forced-air heating have their problems too.

Some entrepreneur will someday invent and market a compact little warming box, good for breadmaking and also for incubating yogurt and tempeh.  It will be well-insulated, use little power, be adjustable from 70 degrees F. to 110 degrees F. or so, keep steady heat (oh, especially, let it keep steady heat) and offer a method of humidifying the atmosphere inside in a controlled way.  In my dream, this wonderful box is easy to clean and not too expensive, a home version of the commercial bakery's proof box.  Until the happy day this comes along, here is avery funky, very simple version you can construct. 

Place a heating pad under a towel (I use one of those pads to keep seeds warm when they are germinating and growing in February inside from a garden supply);  put a cake rack on top and then the dough in a big covered bowl.  On top this structure set an open inverted corrugated box or styrofoam ice chest.  Stick a thermometer inside the dough's snug house to keep tabs on the temperature.  Adjust the temperature by changing the setting on the heating pad or by lifting the bos a little to let in air.  For the final rise you can get a humid atmosphere by putting the shaped loaves in covered casserole dishes, or in loaf pans in sealed plastic bags that have a little water inside.

Of course you don't have to go through all this if you're working with a dough that rises more slowly at normal room temperature, or if your house has a place like a sunny porch that is already just warm enough for your rising dough.  Whatever the temperature, be sure to protect the dough from drying out by covering it with an effective lid, and from exposure to drafts with a layer or two of toweling or newspaper, a box, or some such.  If you are going to use a tea towel make sure to oil the tops of the dough loaves so  it won't stick to the towel.  Nothing is more heart breaking than removing your tea towel and the dough sticking to it and destroying the beautiful rise you had on the shaped bread loaves. 

The usual method to keep dough from drying out on the top is to cover the bowl with a damp towel.  Usually I have a lot of respect for conventions, but this one is a mystery.  What happens every time is that either the towel dries out and doesn't do the job , or the dough rises into it, as we have stated before, and becomes one with the towel forever.  A platter, a lid, a matching bowl inverted on top--any of these is much better.

When you are covering the shaped loaf, if the dough is ripe so that there is no trace of stickiness to it, a damp towel will not adhere to the loaf--but it can still dry out.  Keeping the loaf in a closed bag or in some other closed space like a big covered pan or canning kettle will protect the shaped dough during the final rise.  Provide extra humidity if it is needed by putting a little hot water in the bag or kettle.  This could be done anywhere you are rising the bread, even in the oven.

Oven Rising -- If your oven has a pilot light or an incandescent bulb, the easiest thing is to set the dough in its bowl or pan in the oven to rise.  But watch out!  Most ovens are warmer than you might think, so experiment by keeping the door ajar (say with a rolled up towel) until you get it just right.  The heat in the oven will be steady but dry so be cure to protect the dough from crusting over.  You could put a shallow pan of water in the oven as well to add humidity.  You can leave that in while it is baking as it would make the crust less crusty. 

Preheating the Oven -- In our hurry-up style of baking with our Bosch Universal machines, we many times turn the oven up to it's minimum temperature then turn it off before placing the bread dough loaves in it to rise.  We can then turn the oven right up to 375 degrees F.  and let the loaves bake.  They will rise a little more before the yeast dies so we turn the oven up when the dough  has risen only three-quarters high.  This is definitely a daredevil technique but it can work well if your timiing is right.  Note that for bread that require high initial heat, like french bread, this method will not work.  (Please remember to remove the plastic bag or whatever you have used to keep the bread from crusting over while it is rising.  Thermometers, too.  You'd be surprised at how hard it is to get melted plastic off the oven rack)

You could also remove the nearly risen loaves to a draft-free place, turn the oven on and don't worry about it.  You can set the loaves on a heating pad for the last part of the rise.  A hot-water bottle will work too; it is good for about half and hour.  Since it will be very hot at the beginning, cover it with towels to even out the heat and protect the bread. 

Keeping it Cool -- So far all this has had to do with finding or devising a WARM PLACE, but if you are making Desem or French Bread or want to have a long cool fermentation for an eight or ten hour dough or a long-rising sponge, what you want is a COOL PLACE.  This can be much harder to find, unless your climate it temperate and there is a porch, cellar, or garage that stays cool without being drafty.  Sometimes a low cupboard on the shady side of the house is just right. 

French bread requires dry proofing, which makes it a poor choice for any humid day even on a cool porch.  For other doughs, here is an option that sounds fantastic but works:  make a secure bundle of the dough tied up in a muslin or linen cloth and float it in a tub of cool water.  When you return to it the bundle will have become a soccer ball, bouncy and nicely fermented.  The timing has to be careful, because there is no finger-poke testing!  Less spectacular, also effective:  just leave the dough in it's bowl and place it in an ice chest, keeping its temperature steady and proper with cool water around the bowl.  Again, a thermometer is most helpful in adjusting all these.

HAPPY BAKING!