❗Key Temperature Guidelines in Bread Making❗

🌼 To bake soft, delicious Pullman loaves and sweet buns, controlling dough and fermentation temperatures is just as important as ingredient ratios and mixing technique.

🔑 Dough Mixing (Final Dough Temperature): Keep your final dough temperature out of the mixer bowl around 26°C. If the dough gets too warm during mixing, yeast starts fermenting prematurely before the gluten reaches the full windowpane stage, making it hard to achieve a tall loaf with a fine, feathery crumb.

🔑 First Proof (Bulk Fermentation): Aim for around 28°C and 75% relative humidity. If you don't have a proofing box, room temperature works fine, just be sure to cover the dough well so the surface doesn't dry out and form a skin.

🔑 Second Proof (Final Proof): Aim for around 38°C and 85% relative humidity, as this is the temperature range where yeast is most active. If you don't have a proofing box, place your loaf pan inside a turned-off oven or microwave alongside a bowl of hot water to create a warm, humid chamber.

🌼 Finally, how to keep dough temperature down while mixing in the heat of summer:

Chill all ingredients in the refrigerator or freezer ahead of time, including your bread flour. Chill the dough hook and mixer bowl in the freezer. Run the air conditioning in the kitchen, wrap an ice pack around the outside of the mixer bowl, and make good use of autolyse (soaking method) or sponge methods.