Dough Folding

Hello everyone!
This article that will talk about a well known method every sourdough baker practice: Folding the dough.
Also known as s&f (stretch and fold) I prefer to call this important step just dough folding.

Now, let' s see why this passage is important in baking and even more in sourdough baking.

When we mix a dough, we always want to look for its final temperature, as well as its strenght and level of gluten development (where strenght is the relation between elasticity and extensibility, not absolute strenght).
We all know that those are important parameters to control (have a look to previous articles if you missed something).

Well, folding the dough affects those parameters quite a lot. Let' s see why:

Temperature:


When a dough is mixed, it's then stored in a food grade container, (usually plastic), which have a volume 3 to 4 times bigger than the dough itself. This is called bulk phase.
As the word says, the dough is here stored in big quantity to be able to develope the wanted charactheristics of flavour, strenght and volume.
Because most of the time we store the dough at a different Temperature from the room, doing folds during the bulk stage allows to create a uniform grade of T in the dough.
In a very close relationship with this, folding helps also to distribute gases and bacterias, scattering them through the dough.
This is also very helpfull to the fermentation.


Strenght:


Really important dough feature, it will estabilish how to process the dough in the shaping and proofing phase.
Meanwhile with commercial yeast, is hard to have to augment a dough strenght because the amount of gases produced by yeast during the proofing phase garantee a dough strenghtening; In sourdough baking is much more useful (and even more with high hydration doughs) because less gases are produced during fermentation stage.
Applying a number of fold/s during the bulk stage, at regular intervals, will give strenght to a dough.
Those foldings should be gentler as they are performed towards the end of this phase, to avoid gases loss (that will generate a loss of volume and flavours).
I will give a few but great tips for folding in the "secret" section next on!



Gluten development:


Very related to dough strenght (but not the only cause, gluten development is also a key element. It will state the dough capacity to retain gases and so, to augment volume during the proofing and cooking phase.
While folding our dough, gluten strands are gently stretched, and they create a more regular net to trap the gases.
The more foldings we do, the more regular and tight will be the gluten net, and therefore the crumb structure.