When I first started baking sourdough seriously about a year ago, I didn't think about where I lived very much. I just followed my mom's instructions, fed Yeaston my starter every day, and hoped my bread would turn out good. But then summer hit Las Vegas, and everything changed.
The desert heat here is no joke. We're talking 110 degrees outside, and even with air conditioning, my kitchen stays warm. I learned really fast that temperature affects everything in sourdough. My bulk fermentation that used to take four hours in cooler months was suddenly done in two and a half hours. I'd walk away thinking I had plenty of time, and boom, my dough was overfermented before I even knew what happened. My dad helped me figure out that I needed to actually pay attention to what was happening in the dough, not just follow the clock.
The biggest thing I realized is that Yeaston gets more active when it's hot. My starter basically wakes up faster and gets hungrier. During winter, I could feed it once a day no problem. But in the Vegas summer, I sometimes have to feed it twice a day or it gets too active and starts smelling funky. It's like the heat gives it superpowers, which is actually really cool once you understand how to work with it instead of against it.
I also learned that I need to keep my dough cooler than I used to. My mom showed me how to use cooler water when I'm mixing, and sometimes we even put the dough in a slightly cooler part of the house during bulk fermentation. The stretch-and-folds still happen the same way, but the timing is totally different. In summer I'm doing them every twenty or thirty minutes instead of every thirty-five minutes.
The weird part is that even though the Vegas heat makes things faster and trickier, it actually taught me more about reading my dough. I can't just follow a recipe anymore. I have to actually look at my dough, feel it, and know when it's ready. My neighbors who buy my bread from Rise & Grind probably don't think about this stuff, but every loaf that goes out my door was shaped and scored because I understood exactly what the heat did to it.
Living in the desert isn't a problem for my bakery. It's actually been like a masterclass in sourdough that I wouldn't have gotten anywhere else.
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