Cold-weather dough raising hack: Try a lizard mat
Chilly weather? Dough refusing to rise?? I feel your pain. It feels absolutely insane to be kvetching about the cold here in Israel, but the fact is, it DOES get cold here. Not as cold as some places, but because of that, many homes don’t have central heating and you have to rely on patchy warming from air conditioners and inefficient space heaters. Besides which, houses are built out of concrete, which not only holds onto cold, but it also feels damp—often because it is. So the cold can be very intense here. And that can make bread very, very grumpy. Over the last few weeks as things chilled, I’ve noticed that breads are not so happy rising with the frigid air, especially when things dip down below 20 (Celsius). After a few attempts to steam dough (setting it in a covered bowl set into another bowl or basin filled with hottish water), which led to a scare at one point when the water turned out to be too hot, I was ready to try something else....