It is winter down here in Australia and I find it challenging to find a warm spot to raise my bread dough. What I have been doing is placing the dough in the oven (not switched on) with a pot of hot water, replacing it once or twice. The oven becomes a warm and moist environment for the yeast to do its magic.
What other alternative spots are there to raise the dough in cold seasons?
A non-exhaustive list of ways to get your bread to rise when it's cold includes:
If you are talking about resting, that is for a short period, typically 10-15 minutes, covered with a damp cloth. When raising however, which takes considerably longer, what I do is set my oven at around 90 - 100 F or 30 - 40 C and put the dough in a lightly oiled bowl covered with a damp cloth. Have, with other ovens, turned the heat on briefly, periodically.
Run your dishwasher for a few minutes, wait to let the water finish dripping, cover the bowl of dough with plastic wrap and set inside--top rack seems to work the best for me.
I do something very similar to Shawn's solution. I put a large glass of water in the microwave to heat it up. Once that is done I put my dough right in next to it. If it needs a long rise, I will go back in an hour or two, pull out the dough and reheat the water for a minute or two. Then I can put the dough back in again.
Careful though, a since the space is small it can get hot quickly if you use a large amount of boiled water.
If your refrigerator doesn't have any cabinets above it, you can put a bowl of dough on top of it back near the wall. The waste heat that is sucked out of the fridge and freezer is vented out the back and will rise up the wall. It’s not going to be too warm back there, but it will be warmer than the counter.
My mother used to put the dough in a steel bowl, cover with a plastic bag, and then wrap an electric blanket around the whole thing.
Warning: Cats love to sit on top of this soft, warm, aromatic goodness.
Really Late Additions:
If you have a clothes dryer and happen to have a load of laundry on, sitting on top can be warm enough. I usually just use the oven method.
To go another route -- a bit of forward planning and the use of a fridge might be another way to solve your problem, which is probably one of boredom or inconvenient timing.
Instead of making bread over the course of a morning -- say, between 9am and midday -- you can make it over 24 hours in the fridge, using the cold environment to slow the yeast and develop flavour. It works something like this;
I've made focaccia this way and the nice thing about it is that you don't have to 'time' things very much. Also, the slow prove gives a nice flavour!
I don't think the Australian winter can beat our harsh Canadian winter. One suggestion is to switch then oven light on or to make use of a 60 watts incandescent bulb using an extension wire through the door gasket to keep the oven warm. This will keep the oven warm for an extended period. Or buy a bread maker! (Which I only use for bread kneading only).
I just fill the sink with some hot water and slap it in there, covered by a clean towel. Works like a charm!
You may want to play with the water temperature. In his book Bread, page 383, Jeffrey Hamelman provides a formula to calculate the right temperature of the water before mixing it with the rest of the ingredients. Also, it's mentioned that one of the benefits of the folding technique (just degas and knead for a few seconds every 30-50min 2-3 times) is that the temperature gets even in all the dough.
I don't know if the formula can be shared here. He mentions in a recipe that you can email him about the formula. You can also find if your library has a copy of the book using worldcat, I can see a few copies in Australia, I hope one of them is close to you!
Preheat the oven to 200 degrees (F), leave it there for 10 minutes. Shut the oven off. Make your dough, and when you're done kneading, the oven will be nice and warm, but not too hot. Works great!
I place mine in the bowl I made it in and place in / on the yoghurt maker.
I place mine in an oiled bowl, covered with a damp tea-towel on top of the heating boiler. There's usually enough residual heat coming out of it to make it the warmest place in the house once the heating goes off.
I usually use the hot-water-in-oven method you described, but I've also had success with just putting the dough in the oven with the oven light on (this is slower than the hot water method). I've also put the dough in a metal bowl and placed over some warm water in my slow cooker, put the lid on top, and set it to warm. This works a bit more quickly, so you need to pay attention and shouldn't do it if your dough needs to rise slowly.
I live in the Blue Mountains and it is impossible to get bread to rise in my kitchen at only 2 to 5 degrees above outside temperature. I mix and knead the bread in a bread oven machine (tried kneading and am hopeless at it). After one knead take out and form the loaf and place in the convection oven preheated at 40 deg C for 30 to 40 minutes. When time is up remove and cover with a tea towel or similar and preheat the convection oven to bake at 200 deg C for 30 to 35 minutes. Now we avoid buying bread at the shop if we can.
Try placing an electric heating pad on the counter on low setting. Then put the bowl or pans on top. Check periodically to make sure it is not too hot. works great on granite countertops as they are usually colder than laminate ones. Good luck :)
I put my bread in the slow cooker on the 'warm' function. Works a treat!
If I'm baking in the morning, and my bed is still warm, I put the bowl under the sheets or the top duvet. Alternatively, I grab a hot water bottle and put it under a thick blanket with the bowl.
There is a device created just for this situation. It has both temperature and humidity controls. Due to the pandemic, this item is currently out of stock on Amazon, but generally would be available: https://www.amazon.com/Brod-Taylor-Folding-Proofer-Cooker/dp/B01MEEH0SE
However, it is available on Williams Sonoma site. It costs about $169.00. There are other brands, as well. This one can also be used as a slow cooker, yogurt maker, kombucha maker, etc. In proofer mode: 70-120F (21-49C) in 5 degree increments. Humidity control is optional.
It can hold 2 standard loaf pans.
How about this: fill a hot water bottle with just enough warm/hot water to allow it to still lie flat (get the air out before closing), then rest your (preferably rectangular) container on top.
In winter when the sun is not too hot, I put the bowl of dough into a glass fish tank which is in the sun. The temperature sits on about 35C (measured with old vacola thermomter).
I love making yeast breads and live in South Africa where it can get really cold in winter. If in a hurry, I have found that putting the covered bread dough into the car which has been warmed by the sun,can really help it to rise, though of course it needs to be watched carefully and care must be taken to make sure the heat is not too hot!!
Dishwasher for the win!! Make sure it's clean, of course, and water isn't actively dripping from above. I ensure mine's clean, turn it on and let the bottom fill with hot water, turn off before it can drain, insert bread - wait an appropriate amount of time... then bake.
This is my first winter baking sourdough bread in Lithuania, and it has seriously affected my baking times! In the Summer my bread proofs in about an hour and a half, but now it takes about 9-13 hours. So I usually mix my ingredients some time between 5pm - 7pm, and should get my bread shaped and put into bannetons by 11pm (hopefully sooner, but sometimes I get a late start), then I let them sit on the counter and they are ready bake in the morning. Try starting in the evening, keep the dough on the counter top through the night, and see how your dough is in the morning. If it is over proved, you can start later in the evening, or use less water.
How about a blow dryer? It has air and heat. I haven't tried it yet, but it probably works.
