Bread not rising

What to check, in order

1. Give it longer. A dough at 18°C takes perhaps three times as long as one at 26°C. Most "failed" doughs are simply cold. Move it somewhere warmer and wait.
2. Test the yeast. Mix a teaspoon of yeast with warm water and a pinch of sugar. If it does not foam within ten minutes it is dead, and you will need to start again with fresh yeast.
3. Check what killed it. Water hotter than about 50°C kills yeast. So does direct contact with a lot of salt, and so does mixing yeast straight into concentrated sugar or fat.
4. Check the salt. Too much salt severely inhibits yeast. Around 2% of the flour weight is normal; double that will slow a dough to a crawl.
5. Warm it gently. An oven with only the light on, an oven at its lowest setting turned off after a minute, or a bowl of hot water in a closed microwave alongside the dough.
6. If the yeast is dead, you can knead fresh yeast into the dough — dissolve it in a little warm water first and work it in thoroughly. It is messy and it usually works.

The usual causes

• Cold kitchen. Overwhelmingly the most common. Bread is seasonal in a way people forget.
• Dead or old yeast. Check the date. Dried yeast loses potency, and an opened packet stored in a cupboard rather than the fridge dies quickly.
• Liquid too hot. Warm to the wrist, not hot. This kills more yeast than anything else.
• Salt in direct contact with yeast. Add them to opposite sides of the flour and mix before the liquid goes in.
• Too much sugar or fat. Enriched doughs — brioche, panettone — rise much more slowly and need more yeast and more time.
• Not enough kneading. Without a gluten network the dough cannot hold gas, so it spreads instead of rising.
• Too much flour. A stiff, dry dough rises poorly. Bread dough should be softer than most people make it.

How long it should take

Times are for a standard lean dough. Judge the dough, not the clock.

26°C

First rise about an hour.

21°C

Two hours or more.

18°C

Three to four hours.

Fridge

Overnight to two days, and the flavour is considerably better for it.

Enriched dough

At least half as long again, sometimes double.

Ready when

Roughly doubled, and a floured finger pressed in leaves a dent that springs back slowly and not quite fully.

Temperature is the variable nobody measures

Yeast activity roughly doubles for every 8 to 10 degrees of warmth, within its working range. That means the same dough that proves in an hour in a warm summer kitchen takes three or four hours in a cold one, and the recipe you are following was almost certainly written somewhere warmer than where you are standing.

So "it has not risen" is very often "it has not risen yet". Before concluding the yeast is dead, give it another hour somewhere warmer and look again — the great majority of failed doughs recover on their own.

The corollary is that a slow rise is not a problem to be solved. Cold, slow fermentation produces noticeably better flavour, because the bacteria and yeast have time to generate compounds that a fast warm rise never develops. An overnight rise in the fridge is a technique, not a delay.

Common questions