How long dough takes to rise at each temperature

Warm sourdough: the yeast slows before the bacteria do

A sourdough is raised and soured by two different microbes. Its yeast makes the gas that lifts the dough; its lactic acid bacteria make the lactic and acetic acids that sour it. In the starter Gänzle and colleagues studied, the yeast grew fastest at about 81°F (27°C) and stopped growing at about 97°F (36°C). The bacteria grew fastest at 90 to 91°F (32 to 33°C) and kept growing up to 106°F (41°C).

Below about 79°F (26°C) the two responded to temperature in the same way, which covers most of the 68 to 82°F range where sourdough is usually fermented. Above that they split. At 90°F the yeast in this starter grew about half as fast as at 75°F while the bacteria grew 1.5 to 1.8 times as fast, so in a dough that warm the bacteria outgrow the yeast. Growth is not the same as acid or gas in dough, and neither was measured at these temperatures.

Warming a sourdough from 75°F to 80°F shortens the rise by roughly 5 to 15 percent on these curves (0.85–0.94×). Above 82°F the page gives no number: the yeast slows, the bacteria speed up, and their joint fermentation gives off carbon dioxide as well as acid, so how fast a warm sourdough rises cannot be read from the yeast alone and was not measured. Starters also differ in their microbes; these curves describe one starter.

Cold dough and refrigerated rises

Below 50°F (10°C) the studies’ curves disagree too much to print a multiple. At 40°F, one of the sourdough paper’s two curves has the acid bacteria growing 13 to 16 times more slowly than at 75°F, and the other 200 times more slowly or worse. For the sourdough yeast, one curve says about 40 times more slowly and the other predicts no growth at all below 46°F (8°C). The ten commercial yeast strains range from growing about 22 times more slowly to not growing at all.

For a rise in the refrigerator, use your recipe’s time and the look of the dough, within the maker’s limits. For yeasted dough, Fleischmann’s gives up to 24 hours for dough in a covered bowl, overnight or up to 16 hours for shaped dough such as rolls, and 8 to 16 hours for frozen dough to thaw and rise. Keep the refrigerator at 40°F or below. A dough that rises overnight in the refrigerator tends to bake into a more sour loaf than one that rises for a few hours at room temperature.

What temperature to proof bread

King Arthur Baking’s guidance for wheat doughs is 75 to 78°F at the end of mixing. Naturally leavened doughs headed for a cold retard can start a little lower, and sourdoughs with a lot of rye flour do better in the low to mid 80s °F.

That is well below the temperature yeast likes best. King Arthur puts bread yeast’s fastest growth in the mid-90s °F, the ten yeast strains behind the yeasted column grew fastest at about 90°F (32°C) on average, and a study of real dough found gas production rising all the way to 104°F (40°C). Bakers keep dough cooler because flavor builds with slower fermentation, and because a hot dough overproofs quickly: in King Arthur’s stand-mixer comparison, a 94°F dough was overproofed after the same 60-minute rises that left a 75°F dough just about perfectly proofed.

The 100 to 110°F and 120 to 130°F that Fleischmann’s gives for its yeasts are temperatures for the liquid you mix the yeast into, not for proofing. If your kitchen runs cold, a proofing box can hold the dough at a set temperature, and a straight-sided container makes the rise easy to judge.

Measure the dough, not the room

The chart and calculator take the temperature of the dough. Mixing warms it, and King Arthur’s water-temperature arithmetic allows 22 to 24°F for the heat of a stand mixer and 6 to 8°F for mixing by hand.

To start at the dough temperature you want, work out the water temperature with the water temperature calculator, then check the mixed dough with a probe thermometer.

How the amount of starter or yeast changes the time

More starter or yeast makes a dough ready sooner, and less makes it slower: in real dough, more yeast made carbon dioxide faster. How much faster depends on how many times the microbes must multiply before your dough is ready, and none of the studies behind this page measured that in dough, so neither the chart nor the calculator scales by amount. If you use more starter than your recipe, start checking earlier; with less, expect to wait longer.

Two yeast makers even disagree about swapping yeast types: Red Star says instant and active dry yeast swap one for one, while Fleischmann’s says to use 25% more active dry yeast and add 20 minutes to the rise. To build a levain of a set size, use the starter feeding calculator.

How to tell when the rise is done

The clock only tells you when to start looking; King Arthur’s advice is to let the dough’s progress guide you rather than the time. At the end of bulk fermentation, King Arthur’s bulk fermentation guide looks for dough that has risen significantly, is much smoother than when it started, feels resistant and elastic when tugged with a wet hand, and jiggles when the bowl is gently shaken. A straight-sided container with the starting level marked, even with a strip of masking tape, shows when the dough has doubled.

For the final proof, King Arthur’s check is the poke test. Flour a finger and press it about an inch into the dough: if the dent stays, the loaf is ready to bake; if it springs back out, give it more time. Dough that feels fragile or collapses when you poke it has risen too long. Start poking toward the beginning of your recipe’s rise-time window, and expect a faster rise when your kitchen is warm and humid and a slower one when the air is cold and dry. For a loaf baked in a pan, many recipes bake once the dough is about an inch over the rim.

Signs of going too far, from King Arthur’s test of a 94°F dough: a top that bubbles up and sags, and after baking, a wrinkled loaf with a gap under the top crust and a bitter, acidic taste. If your loaves come out flat or collapsed or more sour than you want, the symptom guide lists what to change next, and the bread timeline planner fits the new rise times into your day.

Enriched dough and the two-hour rule

Eggs are among the foods FDA says should not sit at room temperature for more than 2 hours, or 1 hour when the air temperature is above 90°F. USDA gives the same general rule for perishable food: never leave it out of refrigeration for more than 2 hours, or 1 hour when the temperature is above 90°F. Both rules are written for food in general. Neither agency gives a rising time for bread dough, and this page and its calculator do not judge whether a dough is safe; for enriched doughs, follow your recipe.

How the numbers were made

Commercial yeast. Salvadó and colleagues (2011) measured how fast ten strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the species sold as bread yeast, grew in laboratory broth between 39 and 115°F (4 and 46°C), and fitted a temperature curve to each. The yeasted column uses their species average as its middle and the ten strains for the ends of the range. The strains came from wine, sake and other fermentations and one from a flower, not from bread.

Sourdough. Gänzle, Ehmann and Hammes (1998) did the same for the yeast Candida milleri (now classified as Maudiozyma humilis) and two strains of the lactic acid bacterium Lactobacillus sanfranciscensis (now Fructilactobacillus sanfranciscensis), taken from one commercial sourdough starter kept going for at least 20 years. They fitted two different curves to each microbe; the sourdough columns span both. The curves agree near 75°F and part ways in the cold, which is why the cold rows are wide. The journal’s web table lists two constants of the second curve in an order that contradicts the optimum temperatures stated in the paper’s text; we use the order that reproduces them.

From growth to time. We take rise time as inversely proportional to growth rate: microbes growing half as fast take twice as long. That step is ours, not the papers’. Growth is also not the same as gas. The yeast growth curves level off near 90°F, while gas production in real dough kept rising to 104°F in Chiotellis and Campbell’s measurements, so both rise columns stop at 82°F (28°C), the top of the 68 to 82°F range the sourdough paper gives for usual fermentation, rather than print numbers the studies cannot support.

Left out. Salt, sugar, flour type, hydration, altitude, how lively your starter is and how you mix all change the time, and none of them is in the arithmetic. The chart shifts a schedule you already trust; it cannot set one from nothing. We did not bake or time any dough for this page.