Is it possible to over proof dough

If the environment is warm enough, the dough will develop properly. Also, make sure the environment is not too hot as the dough will rise too quickly and later collapse. Room temperature is fine but this depends on where you live.

In hotter climates, you might even need to place the dough somewhere cool. Similarly, if your kitchen is chilly, you should place the dough somewhere warm such as inside of a warmed up but turned off oven.

Reduce the amount of yeast used. If your dough has over fermented before, perhaps you used too much yeast. Using a higher concentration of yeast can also result in over prooved dough. As a consequence, the dough will probably collapse later. Observe how the dough develops. Check the dough every once in a while to monitor how it develops. This is especially important during the first rise.

The key to a light and airy bread is the CO2 gas development that takes place during the fermentation process. As a result, the dough falls. Over proofed dough does not expand much in the oven which results in a dense and deflated bread.

As the gluten network weakens and large amounts of gas are produced, the dough collapses. If you pop an over-risen loaf into the oven, it will have no capacity to further expand in the oven and will thus deflate. The crust will appear wrinkled.

We know that many bakers simply throw away over proofed dough but there is no reason to do that. We at Freshly Baked believe there is no reason to increase food waste when the dough can, in fact, be saved. How can you make delicious bread using the over proofed dough? Follow the simple steps below:. Step 2. Degas the dough remove excess gas by pressing down on it. This will release the air from the dough. Step 4. Transfer the dough into a pan and leave it to rise again. First, deflate the dough.

It actually feels kind of satisfying to press all that air out; you know, like you're breaking the rules and getting away with it. Next, reshape the dough into a loaf.

Here are our two baked loaves, side by side. On the left: the "remembered" loaf, baked at the proper time. On the right: the forgotten loaf, deflated and allowed to rise again before baking.

Notice the loaf on the right, with the extra rise, actually rose a bit higher — thanks to the extra yeast activity inherent in two rises rather than one. And the flavor? No discernible difference between the two. Is it possible to build an extra rise right into your recipe? Sure; but it's easier to let the dough rise twice in the bowl, rather than twice in the pan. And what about that over-risen loaf that went right into the oven without being deflated and reshaped?

Because the bread had risen so much before it hit the oven's heat, there was no more capacity for additional expansion in the oven. It rose; it fell; it collapsed. Still tastes good, but not a pretty picture. So, can over-proofed dough be saved?

Simply follow the steps above, and you can turn this potential culinary disaster into a perfectly lovely loaf! Interested in more great baking advice from the experts — along with incredible recipes, great writing, and breathtaking photography? Or purchase it online. PJ bakes and writes from her home on Cape Cod, where she enjoys beach-walking, her husband, three dogs, and really good food!

I was able to rescue some overproofed rustic sourdough bread dough. Maybe it helped that this bread had some commercial yeast. The other thing that might have helped was that the overproofing happened at the bulk stage, so I gave it another rise before the shaping stage. Anyway, the bread turned out fine. Thank you, King Arthur!

I just encountered this very situation today for the first time and I panicked. Gluten makes the dough elastic enough that it can expand around bubbles without tearing. Proofing, which begins once the dough is shaped and placed in a proofing vessel or on a flat surface, has some effect on flavor and texture, but it is key in determining the shape, volume, crust, and crumb of the bread.

When carbon dioxide exerts more pressure than a fully proofed dough can withstand, the cell membranes tear, releasing the gas and deflating the dough. Overproofed doughs collapse due to a weakened gluten structure and excessive gas production, while underproofed doughs do not yet have quite enough carbon dioxide production to expand the dough significantly.

Calling proof, knowing when the dough has reached its maximum expansion, is one of the more challenging things bakers have to learn to do. It takes practice and learning from a few mistakes.

Conventional wisdom holds that overproofed doughs are irretrievably damaged and should be thrown away. Our experiments found just the opposite. In fact, we were able to resuscitate the same batch of dough up to 10 times before it suffered any serious loss in quality. Our method for saving overproofed dough works for many kinds of dough, including French lean doughs, high-hydration doughs you may see a slight decrease in volume as well as in crumb size for these , and country-style doughs.

Sourdoughs are more problematic; you should attempt to revive a sourdough only if it was made and proofed within a few hours. The dough has exhausted its sugar supply and is losing its structure. This is similar to slack dough. When you tip the bowl to scrape the dough on the counter you notice that the dough deflates and sometimes turns into a soupy mess.

This dough is over-proofed. If this happens to you, put the dough in a 9X13 pan, drench it in oil and make focaccia. What I mean by this is that you can have a dough that is slightly under-proofed or a dough that is really under-proofed. Conversely, you can have a dough that is slightly over-proofed or a dough that is really over-proofed this is your destined-to-be focaccia dough.

Under-proofed dough is more forgiving. Now it might not have adequate gluten development and the flavor can be less pronounced, but chances are it still has growth potential. You might get some oven spring out of it. During the bench rest period, if the dough starts to seep at the sides due to lack of gluten development , kind of like pancake batter, then give your dough a set of stretch and folds on the bench and leave it to rest before you go into final shaping.

Then with your bowl scrapper work the dough out of the bowl and onto a workbench. Quickly shape the dough, place it in a proofing basket, and bake shortly after. Instead when you load the dough into the oven spray the top of it with water. The tin will provide structure, or as I mentioned before turn it into focaccia. Now you know some signs that indicate if your dough is under or over-proofed.

What about properly fermented dough?