I make a no knead bread up the weekend before, usually enough for about 8 boules. I keep it in the fridge all week and pull out as much as I need to bake at one time and pop it into the oven, usually in 1/2 pound sizes. I also re-use whatever dough I have left and mix it into the new batch the next weekend and keep it in the same container in the fridge. The worst thing I have ever had happen though is my bread kept rising in the fridge and that was a mess, still not sure what I did wrong with that batch.
By controlling the portion size you are cooking you can control the time it takes to bake, and if you make the dough up on the weekend and keep it all week, you should be able to streamline your process.
This process for me originated from Mother Earth News, and looking back on that article, which originally included the master recipe(s), they have books all about the process. So here is a link to that article and the subsequent publications. Happy baking!
Mother Earth News - Healthy Bread in 5 minutes a day
Almost all bread is best eaten on the day it is prepared, whether leavened with baking soda or with yeast. (Exceptions might be some whole-grain dense breads with strong flavors that "settle" and improve after a day or so.)
Fermentation time does in fact have a small impact on how fast bread goes stale, though. Staling generally encompasses two things: (1) degradation of the crust by excess moisture migrating from the interior of the loaf, and (2) hardening of the crumb due to recrystallization of certain starches.
The first aspect isn't that significant in soda bread, since its moisture content is high and its rising power (compared to yeasted bread) is relatively low, so it rarely develops the kind of crackly crust you might find on a French baguette. In that respect, soda bread's crust won't degrade noticeably faster than, say, a typical moist yeasted sandwich bread.
The second aspect might make soda bread more likely to stale faster. A long fermentation allows time for various enzymes to do some work in breaking down some starches in the bread and converting them to sugar. If the starch content in the final bread is lower, staling will be reduced somewhat. For example, amylase enzymes are naturally part of yeast fermentation and will break down starches, though sometimes they are added to improve bread texture and shelf life. (Home bakers often use amylase in the form of barley malt.)
Is this effect significant, though, assuming you don't add enzymes to your bread dough during fermentation? I'd guess that it probably only becomes significant for yeasted breads with long fermentation times, including those that use preferments or sourdough starters, or where fermentation takes place overnight in the refrigerator or something. The long fermentation will allow time for the natural enzymes to activate and do their work.
So, some yeasted breads will have noticeable slower staling due to the process of yeast fermentation. However, if you compared a soda bread recipe vs. a yeasted bread recipe with similar ingredients that is only fermented for a couple of hours, the difference in shelf-life between the two would probably be negligible.
Best Answer
All other factors - ambient temperature, humidity, oven temp, etc - accounted for, the specific time of the day doesn't make any difference, whatsoever.
But alas, this is the real world, we don't hold other factors constant. Most likely your room is slightly warmer and potentially your room could be a bit more humid in the afternoon. These could lead to a more risen product if unaccounted for. But overall, its not the time of the day.
One caveat- There does appear to be some (and by some, I mean a single published paper that I can locate) evidence to suppose circadian cycles in yeast. This would indicate a faster growth rate in the day. But the evidence is underwhelming currently and is almost certainly overpowered by other environmental conditions if present at all.