Forgotten dough during bulk! What would you do?
I’ve been baking sourdough bread for about 2.5 years now and yesterday for the first time, I completely forgot about my dough. I started the process as usual, mixing the flours and water at 1pm, adding the levain, salt and a little more water at 2:30, then completing 6 stretch and folds every 20 minutes. After that I placed my dough in the microwave to complete its bulk because my kitchen was pretty cold and the dough was a little sluggish. I then went upstairs to put my kids to bed at 6:30 and then came downstairs, made myself a cup of tea, watched a comedy special with my husband and went to bed.
It was only when I was making my son’s lunch this morning that I realized we were getting low on bread and then ran to the microwave to find this overproofed puff ball of dough. I don’t have time to deal with it right now so I popped it in the fridge. I’m not going to toss it, because I just don’t want to waste the flour. (I was particularly excited about this mix of 50% BF, 30% sprouted spelt and 20% local ground whole wheat.)
My question is what would you do with this dough? The only thing I can think of is to throw it in a pan with some olive oil and make a makeshift focaccia.
Focaccia is a good shout for overproofed dough. Also just baking in a loaf pan can work pretty well. Alternatively, use it as a preferment and double the recipe by adding fresh flour/water/salt! But you'll get a lot of bread :)
I don't have as much experience as you, but that dough is still holding it's shape, so I would just go ahead and shape and bake like normal, except I'd use loaf pans even if that wasn't your original intent, just to help it hold together. It might not be as good as you wanted it to be, but I've done this before, and the bread is still fine (for me). If the dough is degraded enough that you're having trouble shaping it, you could try adding a bit of flour and liquid to it until it's cohesive enough to shape. I've done that too. If it's really too far gone, you could try using it as a levain for a new batch of bread, but it would be a big batch!
If I’m sure that a dough has overproofed and I want something I can make a sandwich with, then I’ll shape it for a pan loaf. If I’m in the mood for a focaccia and have the toppings then focaccia it is. I suppose a pizza might work as well.
I'm actually jealous at how much your dough actually rises IN THE FRIDGE. I can barely get mine to rise at room temperature. If I put it in the fridge it would take 6 months to get big like that.