Understanding Ambient Humidity and Temperature

A quick guide to working WITH your environment, not against it.

Unless you live in a hermetically sealed domicile, the interior of your home - and where we're focussing, your kitchen - will change in temperature and humidity during different seasons. Here in the middle of a Canadian winter, in an old poorly insulated apartment, we have the pleasure of experiencing a taste of each season all year round, and right now is cold and dry. This, in turn, translates to my dough. It responds to the environment, which means we, as bakers and shepherds of this dough, must also respond to the environment in kind.

Find out how below!

The temperature and humidity in my kitchen from summer to winter ranges from 30°C (86°F) and 85% Relative Humidity to 17°C (62°F) and 30% RH, respectively.

Location, Location, Location

Much like that familiar tenet of real estate, where you are matters to making sourdough. That doesn't mean there are necessarily bad or good places to make sourdough, it just means you need to know how to steer into the curve. Let's use North America for the following general example: if you live in the north west where it's rainy and moderate, you'll enjoy few fluctuations in temperature, but you're contending with a fairly high constant humidity. Whereas in the southwest in desert country, temperatures from day to night rise and fall fairly dramatically and the humidity is next to non-existent. The southeast is crazy hot and humid, and the northeast goes from pleasant to miserable day-to-day, season-to-season, perfectly mirroring the attitudes of those who inhabit the area.

Where bread originated - the area in ancient Mesopotamia down through the Levant and into Egypt - the environment stayed fairly consistent season to season, nice and hot with a steady humidity, perfect for crops, early civilization, and sourdough. The microbes that make sourdough possible thrive in temperatures between 18-30°C and a humidity of 40-70%. This is what we like to call the goldilocks zone. If your environment isn't within these parameters, that doesn't mean you can't make great sourdough, it just takes a few tricks.

Know Your Environment: I live in Toronto, where Lake Ontario is supposed to moderate the temperature (it doesn't), and the best Jamaican beef patties are made (fight me). I find myself every season trying to remember how I adjusted my sourdough habits the last time the weather was like this. As soon as spring turns to summer I'm like, "WHY IS IT SO GOOPY!?" while I'm sweating from every pore. And here we are in the dead of winter and I'm like, "WHY ISN'T IT GROWING!?" Half way through the season I figure it out. Since it's much colder and dryer than usual, I need to adjust by adding a couple more percentages of hydration, and making sure that water is a little warmer than I normally do. Think of it like a medieval physician, trying to balance a cold and phlegmatic patients' humors by giving them hot garlicy pig bung soup... or whatever those psychos used to do.

Know Your Home: Back to the idea of the goldilocks zone, find it in your home. Above the fridge? Behind the tv? By a heat vent? We've found the best option for people in all environments is to condition your oven (turn it on for 10 minutes then turn it off for residual heat) and use that as your incubator. It's an insulated box with little to no airflow. Some people buy those incubators meant for fermenting just for their sourdough. Some are actually pretty affordable if you're into that kind of stuff.

Know Your Dough: The very best tools you have are your own senses. How does your dough look, smell, feel? If it looks too dry, add a splash more water. If it smells very sour too quickly your environment is too warm, rinse your hands with cold water before handling it or throw it in the fridge. Does your dough feel cold? It is! Cuddle up close to it!

It's Bespoke, Naturally

The reason this isn't - and really can't be - an exhaustive guide on environmental factors is for the same reason that makes sourdough so special: it is the product of its environment. Where you are plays a big roll in your dough. Here's a quick story to illustrate my point: Many years ago Andrea and I spent five summer and fall months in Nova Scotia. She has a lot of family there and we stayed on some cottage property helping out with the upkeep, tending a garden and raising some chickens. I had only been trying out sourdough for a year or so beforehand, so I just started to get the hang of it and I wanted to keep working on it out east. Before we left Toronto, I poured my starter out onto a sheet of parchment paper and let it completely dehydrate until it snapped like a cracker. I crumbled it up, put it in a jar, and we drove off to the east coast. When we arrived I mixed water and flour with my crumbled up starter for a day or two until it was reliably bubbly and active. I noticed it smelled different. Not worse, just different. What I should've known is the different microbial environment: I was seaside, hot days cold breezes, surrounded by trees, a field of hay, rows of wild blueberry bushes, and at least a dozen fruit trees in the immediate vicinity. Very different from our Wallace-Emerson apartment in the city. But as I started to make dough, I couldn't get it right. Pancakes! Every time! Was it the salty air? No! It was 80% RH all day and night, but the temperature fluctuated nearly 15°C every 12 hours! Once I figured this out, I began using the oven as an incubator instead of just leaving it on the counter, and I finally made a beautiful loaf of sourdough on the east coast. When we were returning home I did the same thing to my starter and it took me about the same amount of time to readjust to our city environment.

This is Lucille, after Bluth, the infamous matriarch on Arrested Development

played by the magnetic Jessica Walters, RIP.

No Replacement for Experience

Experience really is the very best tool in anyones tool belt. The more you mess around with sourdough in your home the better you get to know its language. It's a living thing, just like you, and it becomes a part of your environment as much as you become a part of it. Being able to read the dough and interpret what it needs to succeed is a vital part of the process, and one that unfortunately can't be shortcut through a blog post.

However, (cue shameless plug) SOURJOE is a great resource for learning, recipes, and so much more, and will definitely help shorten the learning curve on sourdough.

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