The dough spent the night in the fridge and this morning, shortly after I got up and while I was bustling around the kitchen to feed the dog and make coffee and wake up, I put the covered bowl onto the counter to warm up a bit.
It was still cool an hour later when I weighed, cut, kneaded and rolled the dough into a pair of loaf blanks and dropped them into my parchment-lined cast iron loaf pans.
Those two loaves will rest and proof on the counter, out of the way from disturbance, covered and quiet and warm at room temperature until later today. Maybe it will take ten hours, twelve hours or even fourteen — it all depends on the mood of my yeast this week. (But I’m guessing 12 hours.)
When those loaves rise up over the lip of the pan and start to look and feel ready, I’ll heat the oven up to 450F and put them inside for a thirty minute bake.
When the timer chimes, I’ll pull them out onto a cooling rack and savour the smell of fresh baked bread through the house while it lasts. It only lasts a while, sadly.
Ten more minutes of work, spread across the second day and I’ve got two loaves of fresh sourdough ready to enjoy for breakfast in the morning.