Baker's Fold Timer
Bulk fermentation timer that chimes for stretch-and-fold sets on your schedule, tracks fold count on a progress bar, then counts the remaining undisturbed rest to a done alarm.
Built by the AbraCalc team
How to play
- Set your total bulk fermentation time, how often you want fold reminders, and how many fold sets to do.
- Tap Start Bulk Ferment to begin the fullscreen countdown — the progress bar shows fold marks along the total bulk timeline.
- A distinct chime and on-screen cue fire at each scheduled fold — stretch and fold the dough, then let the timer keep running.
- After the last scheduled fold, the timer silently counts down the remaining undisturbed rest until the done alarm signals bulk is complete.
Stretch-and-folds build dough strength during bulk fermentation, but only if you actually remember to do them on schedule — easy to miss when bulk runs three or four hours. This timer sets a total bulk-ferment clock, then chimes at your configured interval (commonly every 30 minutes) for a set number of folds, marking each one on a progress bar so you can see at a glance how many are done and how much undisturbed rest is left. Once the last fold fires, the timer keeps counting down the remaining bulk time in silence, because dough needs to rest untouched after its final fold just as much as it needs the folds themselves.
Frequently asked questions
- How is this different from a bread proofing timer?
- This tool covers bulk fermentation — the stage from mixing to shaping, where stretch-and-folds build gluten strength — and its whole purpose is firing fold reminders on a schedule. A proofing timer, by contrast, times the final proof after shaping, right up to when the loaf goes in the oven, with no folding involved. They track two different stages of the same loaf and aren't interchangeable.
- Why do the fold reminders stop partway through bulk instead of continuing the whole time?
- Stretch-and-folds are meant for the first portion of bulk fermentation, while the dough still has enough structure to benefit from being folded. Doing them too late, once the dough has relaxed and gas has built up, can knock out gas you want to keep. That's why the schedule concentrates folds early and leaves the back half of bulk as undisturbed rest.
- What if I pause the timer partway through — do I lose track of my folds?
- No. Pausing freezes the countdown exactly where it is, and both the remaining time and your fold count pick back up unchanged when you resume — nothing resets and no fold reminder is skipped or duplicated because you stepped away.