Overproofed Sourdough Tips and Tricks With Apollonia Poîlane

When Pierre Poilâne opened his namesake French bakery in 1932, he didn’t know that his breads would lay the groundwork for an artisanal baking revolution. More than 80 years later, Apollonia Poilâne is carrying on her grandfather’s legacy and putting her own stamp on the family business, using the same recipes and the same 80-plus-year-old sourdough starter to produce Poilâne’s cult-status artisan breads. Apollonia is also passionate about reducing food waste, which led her to develop what she calls “breadcooking,” recipes that salvage stale or overproofed loaves.

“All of my breadcooking recipes stem from the idea that I do not want to waste a crumb of bread. From crust to the very last crumb, there is the work of the baker. There’s the work of the miller. There’s the work of the grower. And that value chain should not be wasted.” — Apollonia Poîlane

Overproofed sourdough is dough that ferments for so long that all of the natural yeast converts to carbon dioxide gas. While some carbon gas production needs to occur during proofing—that’s what makes dough rise—if the dough more than doubles in size, there may not be enough yeast left for the bread to continue rising in the oven (called the oven spring). Instead, the dough deflates, and you end up with a very dense bread.

Look for the signs listed below to determine if your dough has overproofed:

1. 1. The dough maintains an indentation after a poke test. After the bulk fermentation or final proofing time specified by your sourdough bread recipe, poke the dough with a finger. “The indications I’m looking for is a dough that feels airy and responds to your hands. It’s one that if you touch it, you can feel that it’s resilient, it’s got some elasticity to it, but it still is rising,” Apollonia says. “If you touch a little down and it deflates, it’s overproofed.”
2. 2. The dough is flat or concave in the bowl. A properly proofed sourdough dough domes in the bowl, meaning carbon dioxide gas continues creating air bubbles. If the dough is flat or caving in, all of the gas has been released, and the dough collapses in on itself because it lacks the air bubbles to hold it up.
3. 3. The dough is overly sticky and stretchy. Overproofed sourdough dough loses all structure, so it’s stretchy and slack when turned onto a work surface. The dough is also stickier than usual due to the lack of remaining gluten structure.
4. 4. The dough smells like beer or alcohol. During fermentation, yeast turns to sugar, which turns to carbon dioxide, which turns to alcohol. If the yeast in a sourdough dough proofs for long enough at room temperature, it completes its life cycle and turns to alcohol. Your starter should smell yeasty, but if it smells alcoholic, it may have gone too far.

If you’re unsure if your dough has overproofed, you’ll definitely find out when you bake it. Look for these two signs:

1. 1. The baked sourdough loaf is squat. Properly proofed sourdough bread undergoes the oven spring, which is the final expression of the carbon dioxide gasses in the oven. An overproofed dough lacks the necessary carbon dioxide gas for the added boost. The result is a flat, squat loaf of bread with a tight, gummy crumb.
2. 2. The baked sourdough loaf is pale in color. The wild, natural yeast in sourdough starter eats the sugar in the bread dough, producing and releasing carbon dioxide gas. If the yeast eats all of the sugar, there is nothing left for it to eat for additional leavening ability. Sugar gives a baked loaf of bread the golden brown, caramelized color, so if all of the sugars are gone, the bread maintains a pale color.

“You’ve over-fermented the dough, and more likely than not, in your oven, the dough will collapse. At that point, you can decide [one of] two things. You can choose not to bake your dough and to save it for another use, or you can carry on baking it and know that you’re gonna have a crumb that’s much denser—and use it to make French toast, for example, or croutons.”
—Apollonia Poîlane

If you discover your dough has overproofed slightly, you may be able to save it before it goes into the oven. Try one of these methods:

1. 1. Adjust your scoring technique. “Scoring the dough helps it give one last little human intervention before it gets baked,” Apollonia says. If your dough is only slightly overproofed, careful scoring may be enough to prevent the bread from collapsing in the oven. “If your dough has overproofed, then you want to be very delicate and just very slightly caress open the dough,” she advises. Learn more about bread scoring.
2. 2. Bake the dough as a pizza or flatbread crust. If your dough has already started to deflate but hasn’t taken on any alcoholic odors, try baking it as a flatbread or pizza.
3. 3. Reshape the dough and let it proof again. If the dough overproofs slightly during the first bulk fermentation, save the dough by punching it down and shaping it for the proofing basket.
4. 4. Use overproofed dough in sourdough discard recipes. You can think of your overproofed dough as a large amount of sourdough discard. Although it won’t rise, it can add a slight tang to baked goods, from crackers to pancakes.

If you discover your loaf is overproofed after you’ve already baked it, there’s no reason to throw it out. “I really view it as an opportunity to turn that dry bread into a new product,” Apollonia says. “Especially if you’ve made it yourself, there’s no reason to waste that bread.” Here are five ways to use a less-than-stellar loaf:

1. 1. Breadcrumbs: Once you’ve discovered how easy it is to make breadcrumbs, you won’t go back to store-bought. Apollonia suggests slicing your overproofed loaf and then drying it out in the oven until it hardens. Then, break the slices into coarse pieces and pulse them in a food processor or blender until they reach your desired consistency. “It’s really by feel,” she says. “I like to have it not especially regular, but small enough that I can coat some fish sticks in it, or I can use it as a little topping to texture, say, some vegetables or even some meat.”
2. 2. Breadcrumb pesto: “My absolute favorite recipe with breadcrumbs is a pesto,” Apollonia says. “My bread pesto recipe stems from finding out that breadcrumbs were used to replace Parmesan in Italy when it came to be missing, too expensive, or just unavailable.”
3. 3. Croutons: “You can use any type of bread to make a crouton,” she says—even overproofed bread. “When it comes to croutons, whether you decide to put them in a pan or dry them in the oven, it's really discretionary. For me, it’s about the time I have at hand to make them as well as the types of spices that I want to bring to the croutons.” Try her recipes for oven-baked croutons, pan-toasted croutons, and Caesar salad with seasoned croutons.
4. 4. Granola: “There really is nothing better than homemade granola,” Apollonia says. Her take on granola swaps rolled oats for small chunks of crispy toasted bread. “I really view this as a recipe to turn the leftovers of your pantry into something really fabulous for breakfast or for a 4:00 p.m. snack.”
5. 5. Pain perdu (French Toast): “I use the French word, because it really represents and illustrates the term we usually use in America, ‘French toast,’” Apollonia says. “Pain perdu means ‘lost bread.’ It's not lost [because it can be used for] baking into a new dish.” You can make classic sourdough French toast with cinnamon and vanilla, but Apollonia prefers a savory pain perdu. “It almost feels like it’s a breakfast omelet with some fresh tomatoes and spice… Once you have tried a savory pain perdu, I will take bets that you might not go back.”

Prevent sourdough dough from over-proofing with the four tips below.

1. 1. Monitor the room temperature. The best temperature for dough fermentation is T-shirt weather: between 68 and 77 degrees Fahrenheit (20–25 degrees Celsius) with 75–85 percent humidity. This is warm enough for yeast to produce carbon dioxide at a steady rate but not so hot that bacteria can run wild. “If you are in a very warm environment, your dough might rise faster,” says Apollonia. “Check on it after 30 minutes. If the dough has risen to about twice the volume, then I will take it there, shape it, and proof it in its final form.”
2. 2. Opt for cold water. “When it’s super hot, the dough will tend to grow much faster,” Apollonia says. “Once you have it in mind, [you] will know how to adjust using, say, colder water to bring down the temperature of the dough.”
3. 3. Preheat the oven ahead of time. Instead of waiting until the end of the final proof to preheat the oven and baking vessel, do it one hour before the final proofing finishes. If you wait to preheat until your dough has finished proofing, you risk letting it overproof in the final minutes. Keep the room temperature in mind: If turning on the oven raises the temperature above 77 degrees Fahrenheit, move your dough to another room.
4. 4. Read the recipe in its entirety. Sourdough recipes may have up to three days of proofing time. Read the recipe before starting the process to ensure the timing of the different fermentations fits with a particular schedule, so the dough rises for the appropriate amount of time. Apollonia recommends using a journal to keep track of your bakes.
5. 5. Stunt the proofing in the refrigerator. If something comes up and you aren’t ready to shape the dough, pop the it in the fridge. The cold temperature stunts the growth of the yeast and slows the fermentation.

Apollonia’s signature bread recipes will help you achieve boulangerie-quality loaves at home. Start with these three:

1. 1. Miche: Apollonia calls the wide, rustic loaves of miche sold at Poîlane “big hugs of bread.” Its tight crumb and mild sourdough flavor make it the perfect vehicle for tartines (toasted open-faced sandwiches). In Paris, many cafés advertise making their tartines with Poîlane miche bread.
2. 2. Pain de seigle: This quintessentially French take on sourdough rye bread was one of the first loaves Apollonia’s grandfather offered at his bakery. Apollonia’s beginner-friendly pain de seigle recipe calls for a mix of rye and wheat flours.
3. 3. Sourdough starter: You can’t make sourdough bread without a healthy starter. Apollonia’s sourdough starter recipe incorporates a little yogurt to jump-start fermentation.

We’ve got you covered. All you knead (see what we did there?) is The MasterClass Annual Membership, some water, flour, salt, and yeast, and our exclusive lessons from Apollonia Poilâne—Paris’s premier bread maker and one of the earliest architects of the artisanal bread movement. Roll up your sleeves and get baking.