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A sponge dough is mixed in stages and offers further possibilities for timing variations. See this page

Bread in a Tearing Hurry

Very high, with mild bakery-made flavor, loaves or rolls produced by this timing come in handy when you want bread fast. We have seen recipes that purport to produce yeasted bread even faster, but we have not liked their raw-gluten taste: you would do better to make a quick bread leavened with baking powder! (see this page.) We believe that the timing presented here is the fastest way to have real bread from dough that has actually developed and ripened properly.

This pattern will work for any recipe that doesn’t call for unusual timing. Basically, you double the yeast and keep the dough very warm; if you manage it just right, the dough moves so quickly that you really have to stay on your toes to avoid letting it get away from you. For light buttery dinner rolls, this timing is a natural; if you are making loaves, it isn’t a bad idea to choose a recipe that has interesting ingredients to add taste and texture, since the bread will not in itself have rich flavor. Including dried fruit, potato, or cooked cereal, for example, would enrich the flavor, and also offer the advantage of increasing the bread’s keeping quality, which otherwise is quite limited.

Good Morning (or Good Afternoon) Bread

In general, the recipes in this book follow this pattern because it is the one most of our friends find convenient. It fits comfortably into a day at home, with plenty of time on either side: if you start at ten, the bread will be out of the oven by mid-afternoon; or, begin about lunchtime if you want fresh rolls for dinner without any rushing.

The dough is really a fairly fast-rising one, and will produce very light bread. Still, the timing is not so fast that the bread does not have good flavor and keeping quality, and the nutritional value is respectable, too. For best flavor, don’t let the dough get warmer than 80°F during its first two rising times. If the dough is kept cooler, it will rise a little more slowly, but the bread will be very good: see next page.

Early Riser’s (or Night Owl’s) Delight

With the same measurements of the previous choice, this timing is more leisurely both for you and for the dough. We usually start the bread about 5:00 A. M. and take it out of the oven at lunchtime. Another household we know begins in the afternoon and finishes just at bedtime. (They have some truly enthusiastic midnight snackers in that house.)

With the longer rise, the bread has rich flavor and very good keeping quality, plus some nutritional advantages from the extra fermentation. Since it rises at room temperature, no special arrangement is necessary for warming the dough, so long as it is protected from drafts. Doughs like this do not demand such precise timing as those with a faster pace, but they still have plenty of energy to rise high.

Simple breads are at their best made in this way because the flavor of the wheat really has a chance to bloom. Flemish Desem and French Breads definitely require the longer rise, but any recipe in this book that does not specify an unusual timing will work beautifully on this schedule.

Night & Day Doughs

Our friends Delores and Gregg are enthusiastic about 24-hour bread because it fits effortlessly into their work schedule: they just mix it up one day after work, punch it down before bed-time and again in the morning, then shape, proof and bake after work the next day. The twelve-hour version can follow the same pattern, except it has to be mixed in the morning before work, not always such a leisurely affair. Both versions benefit from longer baking time, about 15 minutes extra—more if the loaf is heavy.

These breads have exceptional flavor, nutrition and keeping quality providing that they are kept cool enough to ferment properly in the time allotted. The loaves will not rise so high as they would with more yeast on a more accelerated schedule, so if making a large loaf is important to