- [Instructor] Hello, in
this video we are looking
at what happens when you
bulk ferment too long.
I made a dough and here,
the right-hand dough,
you can see that it doesn't
look so smooth anymore.
The left-hand one looks
a little bit smoother
although both are the same dough.
It starts to stink more than usual
and this happens because I
bulk fermented it for too long.
Now, the exact time that
you should bulk ferment,
this depends on how much
sourdough starter you're using,
how active your starter is,
and also how warm your kitchen is.
Definitely wait until your
dough doubles in size.
I always advise to
finish bulk fermentation
a little bit faster
because you want your
dough to be stronger.
The longer you ferment, the
more sour your dough gets
and the harder it is for the
dough to maintain its structure
so it's all about finding the sweet spot.
And this happens to me
a lot so my tip here is,
really, don't ferment too
much, try a little bit less.
And now I wanted to show
you a couple of examples
on good fermentation
versus bad fermentation.
Here, this bread turned out really nicely.
Look at the nice-looking ear at the top.
This is something we're not gonna get
from the other dough that I showed you.
The dough is not going to rise as much,
it's going to taste good but
it's not gonna rise as much.
And here, look at this
beautiful, open crumb
and the ear on the left-hand side.
Nope, we're not gonna get that.
Our bread is gonna look a
little bit more like this,
(chuckles) it turned out too flat.
Also, I might have used
too little water here.
The crumb is still nice, though,
but, still, it's not gonna rise as much.
See, it's more flat.
So, my learning, don't
bulk ferment too long,
try bulk fermenting a little bit shorter.
