On Food and Cooking

order to sell fresh bread in the morning. In the
1920s, bakers in Vienna began to experiment
with breaking the work into two periods, a
daytime stint for mixing, fermentation, and
molding into loaves, and then an early-
morning baking. During the night, the formed
loaves were kept in a refrigerated chamber.
Cool temperatures slow the activity of
microbes substantially; yeasts take 10 times
longer to raise bread in the refrigerator than at
warm room temperature. Refrigeration of
dough is therefore called retarding, and the
cold chamber a retarder. Retarding is now a
common practice.
In addition to giving the baker greater
flexibility, retarding has useful effects on the
dough. Long, slow fermentation allows both
yeasts and bacteria more time to generate
flavor compounds. Cold dough is stiffer than
warm dough, so it’s easier to handle without
causing a loss of leavening gas. And the cycle
of cooling and rewarming redistributes the