During one of my recent online bread making classes, a student asked what were the most common mistakes that people make when baking bread at home. And not leaving your dough to rise long enough is certainly one that comes up quite regularly. So how long should your dough take to rise?
Watch the video or read on to find out more:
Why do I need to let my dough rise anyway?
Good question! Once mixed and kneaded, the yeast in your bread dough begins to break down the starch in the flour to form sugars and organic acids. The yeast feed on the sugars and produce gas, carbon dioxide, that rises your dough. Breaking down the flour also produces flavour in your dough. The best thing you can do is to give this process time – but how much?
Two factors that affect how quickly your dough rises
There isn’t an exact time that you should leave your dough to rise. In fact, the time is likely to change a little for each bread that you bake. This is because how quickly your dough rises depends on two things.
Firstly, the amount of yeast that you put in. The more yeast, the more gas is produced and the more quickly your dough rises. You may therefore think it best to add more yeast if you’d like to get your dough to rise as quickly as possible. However, whilst your dough may rise quickly, the dough will likely have less flavour and may even taste slightly of yeast.
Secondly, yeast work more quickly at warmer temperatures up to 37C. On warmer day, or if your kitchen is usually relatively warm, dough will therefore rise faster. However, it’s not necessary to find a warm spot to rise your dough. Yeast will still work at cooler temperatures, they will just take longer to do so.
So how long should my dough take to rise?
You’ll need to bear in mind the factors above when leaving your dough to rise, and adjust the time accordingly.
As a guide, for a kitchen where the temperature is 20C and you added yeast at 1% of the flour weight (eg 5g dried yeast in 500g flour), you should still leave your dough to rise for around an hour and a half to two hours after kneading it.
Leaving your dough to rise for a longer time helps develop flavour in your finished bread too, so there are benefits to giving your dough plenty of time to rise.
Want to learn more about baking great bread at home?
If you’d like to learn more about baking great bread at home, do check out some of my other resources. There are plenty of bread making tips and recipes on my blog. You can also join my free live bakealongs on Facebook each Saturday morning at 10am.
Ready to get baking some new, delicious loaves? Join one of my online bread making classes. Learn step-by-step how to bake a range of breads from ciabatta to brioche, baguettes to cinnamon buns and more. You can find out more here: https://www.theepsombakehouse.co.uk/learn-to-bake-bread/
Simon on July 3, 2023 at 2:38 pm
Hi,
Thanks for the advice.
I’m following the recipe precisely, and on the first proof, it rises very well, then after the second needing to get the air out, it doesn’t rise so well, but still good. I leave the first proof 2 hrs, and the second proof 2 hrs, but after that it seems to deflate bit and start going a bit flat on top, what am I doing wrong?
Cheers.
Reply
The Epsom Bakehouse on July 13, 2023 at 10:51 am
Thanks for watching and I’m glad you found this useful. You may be leaving the dough too long, especially on the second rise. Try less time, especially on a warm day, and see if that makes a difference.
Reply
jennifer allwood on September 24, 2023 at 7:42 pm
My students at school need to do some experiments with bread making. The ‘prove’ time is an issue due to lesson times. What is the shortest time they can get away with to still have valid results? Will using less flour effect prove time eg 250g & 2,5g of yeast = 30mns or is it always roughly an hour regardless of flour/yeast amount
Reply
The Epsom Bakehouse on September 28, 2023 at 12:03 pm
That sounds like an exciting lesson! Yes, dough takes its time. You’ll see the difference more quickly in smaller pieces though so you could stick to making eg rolls of 50g dough each. And make some ahead of the lesson to compaure?
Reply
