How does Temperature affect Your Sourdough Bread?

In this experiment you will learn more about the role of temperature when baking sourdough bread. We are simulating making one dough at colder temperatures and the other one at warmer temperatures.
The infographic poster: Sourdough infographic poster: thbrco.io/infographic-poster
Recipe for the dough:
- 350g Bread flour
- 50g whole wheat flour
- 320g room temperature water
- 40g liquid sourdough starter
- 8g salt
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Recommended videos:
Debaked ep. 1 - Pizza journey to Napoli: thbrco.io/debaked-napoli
Debaked ep. 2 - Journey to a flour mill: thbrco.io/debaked-flour-mill
Discard starter bread: thbrco.io/discard-starter-bread
Fermentation time table: thbrco.io/fermentation-time-t...
Make a sourdough starter: thbrco.io/make-sourdough-starter
Make your starter more active: thbrco.io/more-active-starter
Recommend sourdough bread recipe: thbrco.io/sourdough-recipe
Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:40 The recipe
1:05 Test setup
3:33 Proofing box
10:00 Baking
10:50 Randomness
11:45 The verdict
#sourdough #sourdoughbread

[@davidbrown3309]

Heindrick, so sorry to hear about the terrible flooding in Germany. Stay safe!

[@the_bread_code]

Thank you!

[@marinah5183]

This is a good experiment but temperature difference should be bigger for comparison, imho. :)

[@_J.F_]

I think a lot of people aim for 21 Celsius as an indoor temperature, using heating or air conditioning depending on the season. That said when heating in the winter a lot of households will have thermostat controls that minimise the heating at night, when people usually sleep, all the way down to about 16 C to save energy. If doing overnight fermentation this means that in the winter your dough might get down to around 16 C, and in the summer you might easily have maybe 21-22 as the coolest night time temperature, so why not try comparing these temperatures.

[@amarijae]

PLEASE do an experiment with dough proofing at 65° F! That’s the temperature of my kitchen in winter.

[@lsieu]

Another wonderful video! Thank you, Henrik! I'm still struggling with oven spring, but I tend to be inattentive and over ferment.🤭 I did find out that my oven was not reaching the full temp. Adjusting the oven setting whilst experimenting with your super lazy loaf pan recipe, I got a nice oven spring... So I think I'm ready to try the artisan boule again. At 1 loaf per week, I have a lot of time in-between to over think it. 🤣 Thanks again! I really enjoy your videos!

[@Jahloveipraise]

Great video as always! Always love the scientific approach you take to bread making, and that you are more focused on teaching principles than recipes which is so much more beneficial for learning and problem solving. I was hoping you would be able to give me some input. I was looking to craft a chocolate sourdough recipe, and was wondering what you’re thoughts on the percentage of cocoa powder to use in it. I was thinking around 10% Dutch processed. I figured i would get some insight before I dive in blindly. I will experiment soon, and will definitely keep you posted with that results. Thanks so much! You are by far one of the best baking channels!

[@Thiagoyt2]

guten tag and thank you very much for this video! In Brazil we usually have high temperatures throughout the year (between 20-35 celsius). Aside from the faster fermentation, I also noticed that the dough can be stickier when it's too hot. To solve that, if needed, I'll throw the dough in the freezer for a few minutes before handling it. That helps ;)

[@sabahbubbler]

Temperature is a big role!!! I just followed tartine guide and my country is hot as hell, malaysia and it gets about 86°f above. I followed *sourdough journey* channel tips and maintain the temp between 78° to 82°, it gives the best surface tension, controlled fermentation

[@strangerintheselands251]

When your picture showed "cold" I thought it is about 5-8 degrees, but then it turned out that by "cold" you mean 25C, compared to 30 as "warm". That is funny.

[@MichaelRei99]

I finally made an active sourdough starter! I named it Yeasty Boys! I’m going to go large and make some whole wheat bread this weekend!

[@gapey]

I like the name!

[@the_bread_code]

Go Yeasty booooyyyyys

[@MichaelRei99]

@@gapey thanks!😀

[@JoseLausuch]

Interesting experiment! Looks like the "hotter" one struggled a bit to hold the structure and got a flatter than the "cold" one, I guess due to higher protease activity degrading the gluten and making the loaf weaker. Excellent bread, whatever version anyway 😀

[@davidpetry7853]

Maybe do this test again, when its a little bit cooler. Something like 21°C room temp maybe

[@the_bread_code]

Good point. Will try again in winter times and then use my proofing box.

[@ktyty1244]

Would be interesting with no proofing box 😁

[@bunhelsingslegacy3549]

Yeah my kitchen gets as low as 18C in winter. Then again I usually finish everything in the fridge anyway.

[@doraharrison1642]

great video...Question ..where do you get the glass tubes and what are they called? Thank you

[@em34327]

When weather starts to get cold, I make alotttttt of bread, so many loafs so I can eat it all during winterrr

[@whiskeytangosierra6]

Very similar to my favorite crumb! I don't like the butter or oil just running through the bread, and do like a fluffy, flavorful bread. One of my experiments I placed the dough in the closet where my water heater lives. It fermented MUCH faster, so fast that it over proofed. I was not watching it anywhere near close enough.

[@Jan46]

I bake my bread following the 50% sample height method, and the only thing that changes the taste is when i keep it for longer in the colder fridge, i have a fridge where it is 3°C and one where its 8C° and depending on when i bake tit( morning or afternoon) I put it in one or the other. before putting in the colder fridge I have to let the dough rise in the banneton, in the warmer fridge it rises slowly until it fills the banneton.

[@linseyn5676]

Comparison was okay but I think there needed ti be a greater temperature difference to notice much difference in taste. I made exactly the same recipe two weeks in a row. The first loaf was sweet and delicious. It was proofed on the kitchen counter on a very hot day. The second loaf got shoved in the fridge overnight to bulk because I ran out of time. It is SOUR. Too sour for my taste so from now on I’ll try to plan proofing time better. Thanks for the informative videos!

[@grzegorzsiwek7209]

The colder one seems to be more open? Or it's just the scoring or shaping?great experiment. One thing i noticed that in 30°C it took 6 hours to double😲 mine would way overferment by that. 5 hours since adding starter to finish bulk at 25°C is just about enough. Do you add your starter at full peak? Mine usually quadruples within 5 hours since feed 1:2:2 ratio. It lives in my homemade proof box at 25°C at all times.

[@ericdunkelberger6811]

Great video. I purchased the ph meter that you have. I think that is a great scientific approach to know when your dough is fermented and it is easy to be consistent. For proofing, most people use the finger poke test. But have you thought about using the ph meter as well? The ph will lower even with an overnight proof in the refrigerator as there is still a bit of fermentation that occurs. Can ph levels help determine the optimal level of proofing in the dough?

[@jangunther431]

Moin, Bremer hier :) ich habe gemerkt, dass Roggenmehl viel zum sauren Geschmack beiträgt!

[@supersosiska]

Interesting experiment. I personally live in a hot and humid country, and during summer now I get 27-28 [c] in house during night. All this makes a sourdough starter very hard to make from scratch (ferments way too fast). Question: your oven setup, how does it look after the first 25 minutes? Do you just remove the upper tray?

[@EliePipe]

I appreciate your work very much, but this time.... There is one HUGE flaw in this experiment. So called 'room temperature' is considered 18°C. Of what I've learned after much research: 24°C is the tipping point: over 24°C you have more yeast and lactic acid, under 24°C: less yeast and more acidic acid (vinegar) . So starting from 25°C (not real room temperature and over the tipping point) gives the same result (only slower) than 30°C. Which you have proved. You would see a huge difference at real 'room temperature' of 18°C. But: thumbs up for your work.

[@lisap.rosenkvist2598]

Maby you have tested this before but I would want to see and hear about the difference between proofing cold (for a long time) and warm (for a shorter time).

[@furang94]

Hi. I started making sourdough bread at the end of last year, when it's summer here in Chile. Now that we're in winter, I have noticed that the fermentation and proofing time are way longer than before, and that my bread is not as fluffy (?) as before, it's more compact. So I decided to duplicate the fermentation and proofing time, and I got better results, but when I baked the bread, it was still more compact than I expected :( (Sorry for my English!)

[@the_bread_code]

It might even be that you have to triple the times. I recommend to extract a small sample. That sample will help you to judge when your dough has properly fermented. Aim for a 50% size increase.

[@furang94]

@@the_bread_code thank you! I will do that next time

[@davidhunternyc1]

When you take the bread out of the fridge do you bring the bread back to room temperature before baking or do you bake the bread straight from the refrigerator? Thank you.

[@lsieu]

Hey Henrik! We're hearing about massive flooding in your part of the world. Are you okay? Is your family ok? Sending appreciation and prayers of safety!

[@the_bread_code]

Thank you 🙏🏻. All good in the north.

[@kmkkarnatakamalluskitchen]

❤️❤️❤️👍👍👍

[@tdobek]

Like others I'm wondering what would happen if it was significantly colder. I personally, had issues in the winter with gluten being destroyed faster vs. yeast inflating the dough. Regarding oven-spring, from my experiments, I get bigger spring when I score the oval dough almost from top to bottom, I think one of the breads had the shorter line - in my case it would result in smaller spring, thoughts?

[@Livingtabitha]

How long do you let them sit at room temp after taking out of the fridge?

[@evandeloo]

What I'm missing is the moisture in the location. If you want to compare you have to compare apples with apples. Here in Kenya the temp is much higher but moisture too. Also in your box it's not the same as in an open air environment. And then all baker's percentage are completely different. I wish that baker's percentage would include all these differences in every aspect.

[@fernandoandrade9039]

Not much difference because the prominent levain is dominant, if you feed your levain at 32c everytime you will favor the bacteria that produce more lactic acid, but for a normal fermentation period I believe the starter is prodominant.

[@TheDudu211]

I aim for a starting dough temp of 82F. I take the flour temp and then adjust the water temp to suit. If the flour is 75 then I Need water at 88 to get a final temp of 82

[@breadhead2367]

I'm wondering if there wasn't much of a difference because you used the liquid starter. Perhaps the tendency for the liquid starter to favor lactic fermentation removes some of the sour notes that come from acetic fermentation in standard starters? Maybe you should re-do the test with a non-liquid starter to see if the results are the same!

[@the_bread_code]

100%

[@Anesthesia069]

I find you have to be careful with the aliquot in higher temperatures because of the radius of the sample an the rate of temperature change. Have you ever measured dough volume (or even pH if your meter is sensitive enough) vs time? That's certainly interesting! I did it once and it had some interesting results (which I tend to observe in the bulk dough).

[@the_bread_code]

Yep. I totally agree. The hotter it gets the more unreliable the aliquot can be. Especially if the temperature changes. The main dough always changes slower than the aliquot jar :-)

[@Anesthesia069]

@@the_bread_code I overfermented a loaf one day, even with the aliquot, so I looked up the equation for a dT/dt in a sphere to give me a rough idea why. Sometimes, I miss calculus!

[@satyris410]

you need to compare water temperature at the time it hits the flour when you start your dough. I think this contributes a great deal to gluten develoment

[@ThomCego]

Interessant wäre herauszufinden, welchen Unterschied die Wassertemperatur bei der Autolyse machen würde....🙂 Kalt vs heiß

[@impulserhaltung]

Did you ever check if it makes a difference if the dough comes out of the fridge before baking or is at RT?

[@the_bread_code]

Yep. The colder dough is a little stiffer and thus scoring is easier. A good hack is to use the freezer instead for 30 minutes before the bake :-). Taste wise I could not notice a difference.

[@manofthecloth777]

Is oven with a light on a good proofing box?

[@the_bread_code]

Yes. But it can get too hot.

[@cutabove9046]

The flavor difference with sourdough is a function of how you maintain your starter. Do you feed and keep your starter in such a way that you build the acid load of your starter or are you keeping it young and therefore not much acid. And of course do you work you starter to balance acids or do you prefer lactic over acetic, or the other way around.

[@the_bread_code]

Yep. 100%, great comment. Your starter regrows in your main dough, but still, some of its properties are carried over to your main dough :-). I have a new interesting video coming up on that topic.

[@danieldeleon3421]

This isn't related so much to the flavor, but why does the colder, longer fermentation have better oven spring? Is this typical with all flour types? I've been trying for an open crumb and good oven spring on my 100% whole wheat sourdough and it's been challenging. Thanks!

[@the_bread_code]

Hey Daniel. Yep. But with whole wheat you have to be careful. Don't ferment for too long, the flour starts to break down way faster. Also - you don't need cold fermentation, it's a trick to enable you to bake exactly when you want.

[@isabelab6851]

Ok, I watched this…my kitchen is like a breadbox…so I am having to work fast or use fridge to retard the process. Today it was great I was able to make baguettes in an 8 hour span. My other experiment…in fridge overnight

[@davewestfoils]

Interested in peoples thoughts - I live in a warm climate - averages 25-35 degrees. The yeast that would thrive in my climate would be better suited to warm conditions I assume. The concern is that my Bulk rise takes about 24 hours and then my proof can take just as long. House has been averaging 18-20 degrees. As an experiment I ran the heater for 24 hours at 24 degrees and voila' bulk rise took 8 hours and proof took about 4. The question is - does the yeast strains in your starter affect your ferment and if so should you have a winter starter and a summer starter i.e one that you start in winter and one that you start in summer - assuming different yeast will be thriving in your environment at those times?

[@lindalambert6554]

I have had a few sticky messes over the last few months. I now believe they were from over-fermentation in warm temperatures. Must the resulting "sticky mess" have to be thrown out or can it be revived by adding more flour, water salt and starter?

[@the_bread_code]

Use a loaf pan to rescue the dough :-). Then just wait another 30 minutes, then bake it.

[@josevelasco216]

Alright, so I think this one of the best (if not the best) sourdough channels. However, somehow I just feel like all these videos are too long. I'd go for shorter versions with more concise information (which is always there, but it´s so hard to find and look back at it!).

[@chrisb6578]

I would push the next experiment and maybe use an upper temperature of 35C. At that temp the bacteria will be very happy while the yeast not so much. We also have to take into account the variations in starter. I know if I ferment at 30-32C the bacteria will be stronger and I will end up with a very slack dough. I know if I proof at 30C I will not get as good a rise compared to a proof of 25C. Temp makes all the difference with sourdough.

[@Krzychukrk]

I do see a huge difference in bulk rise at 22-24 and 26-27. The dough behaves completely different, I never had the same and satisfactory results with lower temps while high temps almost guarantee success. When I increase time of bulk fermentation to compensate temp difference I often get flat loaves. Getting lost in this!

[@annerowenachee1749]

Yeah, hope you’re not affected by the flooding .

[@the_bread_code]

Thanks. All good here.

[@klaskristian1]

I have done everything. Bulkfermenting until 50% rise for 4-5 hours and then coldproofed over night, but my breads are always very bad looking without any ovenspring. Taste. Crum and crust texture are almost always are very good. But the breads tends to be very flat. No natter how much i strech and folds my doughs never seems to be strong like i see others are. I am often using 70% water or little less. Very strange

[@ktyty1244]

I was waiting to see the colder one at around 10C...

[@the_bread_code]

Good point!

[@hamishmaclean1409]

25 and 30 are both very warm and yeast friendly, 20 vs 25 would be more interesting

[@patrickchamberlain3980]

15 and 25 would be even more interesting .. these are real world temperatures in Northern Europe in Winter

[@tastyfrzz1]

So the null hypothesis of no difference passed?

[@qwerty11111122]

The terminology of the two outcomes is: "Reject the null hypothesis" or "Fail to reject null hypothesis"

[@mattmallecoccio8378]

I don't like a bread that's too sour. I have been getting bread that's too sour and thus I have been adding sugar to my starter and my dough. Is that a good way to compensate?

[@cfazio]

Use a stiffer starter and refresh it more often. That will help.

[@mattmallecoccio8378]

Thanks c fazio

[@voidremoved]

can you do it again but with an even higher temp? I have fermented my dough at 105 F and had a decent loaf. I had to cool the dough back down to handle it easier, but the loaves came out nice. Well, nice by my standards... So.. Dense with a tight crumb and moderate ear. But I use a lot of whole wheat and coarse flour mixed with bread flour, so my loaves are always on the dense side. While my cold vs. hot ferment make loaves that look similar, I've noticed the dough I ferment in the fridge makes a smelly loaf. Smelly in a good way, but the smell is way stronger than a hot ferment. I even tried a loaf at 110 F but over fermented it a bit, it fermented very fast.

[@voidremoved]

By the way, you and Bread Pit have inspired me to name my starter... I call it Maestro Fresh Bread. Cause my loaves are dense like Maestros lyrics, heavy like his beats, my crusts are hard and my gluten networks are built to last kzbin.info/www/bejne/qGbKlYWhaqtsms0

[@the_bread_code]

Hahaha. Good one! Sounds like it tasted delicious regardless bruv!

[@FraeschD]

I appreciate your scientific approach, but i demand at least triplicates for each data point from now on! :-P

[@the_bread_code]

🤣

[@abbasduman6963]

Which flour are you using?

[@the_bread_code]

Sorry Abbas. Only saw this now. I linked it in the description :-)

[@abbasduman6963]

@@the_bread_code No problem ;)

[@NancyAnneMartin]

I'm surprised you didn't see a difference! I have personally noticed a longer fermentation in colder temperatures gives me both a better crumb and more sour taste. Most of the time. So much about sourdough will always be a mystery, I think.

[@voidremoved]

I have been wondering about hot vs cold starter. Any thoughts or experiments about that? I mean if you make two loaves the same way, with the only difference being one starter was cold and the other is hot? Will that make a difference? A starter at around 85 F would have more yeast than a starter kept cool? So how would this effect the finished loaves, if the loaves are then fermented at the same temperature as each other? Would they balance out in bulk ferment, or would the hot starter with more yeast raise a higher loaf?

[@the_bread_code]

Interesting idea. Yep, I think it would definitely make a difference. In my latest video (out soon) I will be looking at the impact of your starter on the sourdough bread.

[@Sanutep]

I always get tricked by "let sit at room temperature" in recipes. My home in NZ had room temp of 10degree C or less in winter... 😅

[@mattmallecoccio8378]

I only make bread in cooler weather because it cuts down on energy use in my home

[@bfvelitex6546]

Pfennigfuchser

[@mattmallecoccio8378]

@@bfvelitex6546 why did you just say penny fox in German to me?

[@jimijackson]

I found cold has better flavour

[@tastyfrzz1]

Still can't make an ear to save my soul.

[@helenjohnson7583]

Of course you bit off the bunny ears… 😉

[@vinaymieux]

At 30C my dough over ferments in 3hrs. I don't understand how yours was still good at 6hrs. I make 80% Whole Wheat 20% AP. My Whole wheat has 13% protein, AP has 12% protein. I use 20% starter (100% hydration). Also tried with liquid starter and also tried with 10% starter. Still my gluten network always almost breaks till shaping time. I've baked almost 25 Frisbees by now. ☹️😔

[@cutabove9046]

Whole grain regardless of type ferment much faster than white flour.

[@isabelab6851]

@@cutabove9046 and if you autolyse make it a short one

[@vinaymieux]

@@isabelab6851 I Autolyse without starter only 2hrs.

[@zenco1611]

That’s because the relative strength and inoculation percentage of the starter will produce different fermentation times despite other variables being the same.

[@vinaymieux]

@@zenco1611 My starter triples in size with a 1:10:10 feeding within 7-8 hrs.

[@robertosarnataro]

I like your experiments and tests but in my opinion this specific experiment seems contradict the result of this comparison: kzbin.info/www/bejne/goKzdIuDpd2CasU Maybe is not a heat for its own sake but a heat specifically originated from a mechanical overkneading

[@flofi4397]

Too Long didnt watch 😅 Joke Here. Biochem 101, 10 degrees C more,Double of the reaction Speed of biocatalytic reaction. Small hint for Fermentation time