The Cold Rise

It's been a while, I know. I haven't been baking or cooking much lately - it's a long story. I have moved house, and hopefully I'll be able to bake more now that I'm not contending with people on diets.

I made this today. It's just your basic white bread, but after reading The Underground Baker's latest post where she mentioned that she put her bread dough in the fridge for a generous amount of time to develop the sugars, I decided to try a different technique. I rose this in the fridge. Yeast will rise in the fridge, but it will take much longer. I shaped this loaf and put it in the pan, covered it with plastic wrap, and put it in the fridge for three and a half hours. By that time it had doubled in size, and the dough was sturdy and scored very easily. Oftentimes, I find, that warm-risen loaves I've made at home have deflated quite a bit upon scoring or been too gooey to score well.

I'm getting used to a new oven here in my new home. It's a cooler oven, i.e. 350F on the dial is probably more like 300F. I cranked the heat up and put the loaf in. 16 minutes later, I had this. It rose quite a bit more during the baking process and came out quite gorgeously coloured.

It's a funky shape, I know, but I am very pleased with this. It looks very artisanal and was nice and crusty on the outside and soft on the inside. And it tasted great.