Can I slow down a dough overnight in the fridge?

The fridge is the most useful piece of bread equipment most people already own. It turns bread from a day-long commitment into something you can fit around a normal schedule.

Safety

Step by step

1. Understand what cold does.Yeast activity slows dramatically below about 10°C while enzyme activity continues, breaking starch into sugars and protein into amino acids. That is where the deeper flavour and better crust colour come from.
2. Choose which stage to retard.After shaping is the most useful — the dough is ready to bake straight from the fridge. Retarding the bulk ferment also works but you then have to shape cold dough, which is stiffer.
3. Give it a head start.Let the dough begin fermenting at room temperature for 30 to 60 minutes before it goes in. Dough chilled immediately can take a very long time to get going.
4. Know the timings.A straight yeasted dough, 8 to 16 hours. A sourdough, 12 to 48 hours. Beyond that most doughs over-ferment, weaken and spread rather than rise.
5. Reduce the yeast for a long retard.For an overnight prove, cut commercial yeast by roughly half. The extra time more than makes up for it, and it prevents over-proving before morning.
6. Cover it properly.A fridge is a drying environment. An uncovered dough forms a skin that will not stretch and shows as a tough patch. A shower cap over a banneton, a lidded box, or oiled cling film.
7. Leave room to expand.It will still rise, slowly. A container with headroom, not filled to the top.
8. Bake most doughs straight from cold.Cold dough is firmer, so it scores cleanly and holds its shape, and the delayed warming gives better oven spring. For lean doughs, straight from the fridge into a hot oven.
9. Let enriched doughs warm slightly.Brioche and other butter-rich doughs are very firm cold. An hour at room temperature makes them workable, and they usually need a little more final proving.
10. Judge by the dough, not the clock.Fridge temperatures vary. Use the poke test — an indent that springs back slowly and only part way — rather than assuming twelve hours is right for your fridge.
11. Expect a different crust.More sugars at the surface means faster, darker browning. Watch it, and be ready to drop the temperature slightly towards the end.
12. Use it for pizza too.Cold-proved pizza dough is noticeably better than same-day, and it fits domestic timing far more comfortably. Two to three days is a good window.

Tips

• Retard after shaping. It means you can go from fridge to hot oven with no morning faff.
• Halve the yeast for an overnight prove, or it will over-ferment before you wake up.
• Bake lean doughs straight from cold — better scoring, better oven spring.

Common mistakes

• Putting a freshly mixed dough straight into the fridge — The yeast never gets going, so very little happens overnight and the dough is under-developed in the morning. Give it 30 to 60 minutes at room temperature first.
• Leaving it uncovered — A fridge dries the surface into a skin that will not stretch, which restricts oven spring and shows as a tough patch on the crust.

If it doesn't work