November 22, 2015 - 3:13pm
Starter vs yeast for artisan type breads?
Before I venture into the land of starters I have some questions. Normally I bake the four ingredient bread.... flour, water, yeast and salt to mimic the artisan style. Therefore my question pertains to this 4 ingredient recipe which I really enjoy eating.
As a relatively new baker, for the last 2 years I have been baking above recipe using just store bought yeast. Although I do not intend to make sourdough breads, it is my understanding that a starter can also be used for non sourdough breads. Is this true? What do the good bakeries use, starter or yeast?
How would using a starter change outcome of my bread in terms of flavor, chew, and texture?
Please be specific.
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but I fear the answer would fill volumes.
I just made my first sourdough after baking breads recreationally for almost 50 years so I can't speak with any authority, but commercial yeast leavens the dough with little flavor compared to the natural acidity of the wild beasties whose byproducts flavor your breads, as little or as much as you can influence them through managing time and temperature.
Enriched breads are great fun in their own rights, but I am excited to try a less-is-more approach with the three ingredient sourdough a for a while.
The term "starter" can indeed be confusing sometimes.
Simply put, a starter is a "preferment". And a preferment is a small portion of the dough that is made in advance, and then given the opportunity to "mature". This period of "pre"-fermentation can have wonderful effects on the outcome of the final dough - flavor, texture, aroma, etc.
Also, a preferment can be made using the same commercial yeast with which you are already familiar. Or it can be made using wild caught yeast - sourdough for example.
There are many different names and formula's for preferments. Each of which can range from being very loose and batter-like (poolish) to stiff and hard (biga). Some are made with commercial yeast. Some are made from wild yeast. And depending upon the method, various flavors and aromas can result - nutty, sweet, sour.
But in the end they are all simply types of preferment... or starter.
Professional bakeries use any number of these methods to make bread. It just depend on what type of bread they are making.
You mentioned that you have been baking bread for a couple of years using the tried-and-true flour, water, yeast, salt formula. You can easily begin to experiment with starters using the same recipe that you already know... However the day before you are going to bake, take small portions of flour, water and yeast from the amounts of your recipe. And use them to build a preferment or "starter".
For example, from the measurements of your favorite recipe, take 100g flour, 100g water and .25 tsp yeast. Mix them well in a small bowl, cover with plastic wrap and then leave it on the counter for about 12-16 hours. It should be bubbly and have a pleasant aroma. At that point you now have a nice starter. :)
Simply mix this starter with the remaining ingredients and follow the rest of the your recipe as usual.
This may not have been what you are looking for.
Here are a few links to some specific information about preferment that might begin to help:
http://www.kingarthurflour.com/professional/preferments.html
Biga vs. Poolish
Guide to Preferments
Not really. This is an interesting question.making a poolish or biga with a pinch of yeast the day before making a yeast bread is supposed to make the bread more flavorful. To be honest, I guess my palate isn't good enough to tell the difference between a poolish or biga yeast bread and on made straight away with commercial yeast and no pre-fermented flour. There isn't much difference if you ask me. For me, SD breads are much more flavorful and complex because they have the flavor that the yeast provide plus all the flavor that LAB bring to the bread party. it isn't even close. Oddly,most people don't like sour bread. So yeast breads dominate the bread baking world by a huge margin - as they always have since ancient times when bakers discovered the barm from beer brewing also makes great yeast bread too.
The traditional meaning of 'artisan' bread is one made by hand, without the use of machines, by a craftsman baked in a wood fired or naturally fired masonry oven where the end product is deemed to be the best by his artisan peers. So traditional artisan bread can be either yeast or sourdough..... or even yeast water, kefir, unleavened or barm bread for that matter.
Today the meaning of artisan, like so many other words, has been bastardized, appropriated and changed by the me too's and marketers so much, over time that it can mean just about anything. Now you can get 'artisan' buns for your sammy at Dunkin' Donuts to go with your artisan coffee, artisan napkin and artisan plastic spoon. I'm guessing that artisan is totally meaningless today and that it is very likely what ever bread you are baking is artisan as long as you or someone else says it is,
Otherwise I would stick to the traditional meaning where SD or yeast bread isn't part of the definition but...... hand made without the use of machines, made by a craftsman, where the best product results as judged by other baking artisans and the bread is baked in a naturally fired, masonry oven are part of the equation. - Can't ever go wrong with that. That means most all of us are not artisan bakers making any kind of artisan bread - no matter what bread we are making:-) I'm thinking that is just the way it was always intended by the real artisan. Remarkably, there are still many,many traditional artisan bakers, baking real artisan bread all over the world today.
Happy bread baking your way
Happy baking
I really appreciate the greatly detailed responses from everybody. Allow me to ask one more favor from this forum....
I want to experiment, so as someone who is not attempting to make a tangy sourdough bread and is attempting to stay with the traditional baguette flavor, would somebody recommend a easy mother starter to try as my first attempt?
For non-hybrid loaves, if you use an AP or BF starter, include a fairly high proportion of starter and use only AP or BF in the dough, you'll get less sourness. The degree to which the sourness is noticeable will vary from person to person depending on individual palates, how the bread is served (e.g. alone vs. with meats, cheeses, condiments, etc. of various strengths), etc. Such loaves have more flavor than similar yeasted ones, but the sourness is mild enough so that in my experience, relatively few people identify them as SD without being prompted. (e.g. "how was the bread?" will elicit fewer SD responses than "what kind of bread do you think that was?")
is made with a pinch of yeast in a 100% hydration poolish at about an overall 67-68% hydration using low protein white flour T-55 especially made for baguettes, which would be store bought AP flour here in the USA as a close match.
King Arthur Flour has a good recipe on their website and all the video that go into shaping one with JH no less as the web star. We make all kinds of sourdough, fancy do, versions around here but the traditional is that one.
i'm thinking about having a Fresh Lofian get together - meet and greet - for the Phoenix crowd - would you be interested? I though i would have it at the Lake Pavilion where live.
with a poolish you are having a difficult time with so ignore my post above. I use it to make 'slash bags' - the ones to practice slashing on:-)
Is a hybrid bread. I use a yeasted poolish (sometimes) and also a dollop of my wholegrain rye sourdough starter, and both do add to the flavour of the bread. The main rising agent is yeast, but I vary the amount depending on how much time I have to keep an eye on bread dough.
The recipe I've developed also converts really well to sourdough. All I do there is put the starter into the same amount of flour & water that I'd use for the poolish in lieu of the pinch of yeast, and I also omit the yeast from the dough itself. Other than that, the ingredients and method remain the same.
If you use white bread flour to make a poolish, the results are quite subtle, but I've found that using wholemeal or whole rye gives a more pronounced flavour.
So from the same basic recipe I can bake a variety of different breads depending on how I choose to build the dough, ranging from a bog-standard loaf to a full-on sourdough. And that's without playing around with different types of flour...
Bottom line is, the longer the overall dough build, the more stages you incorporate and the longer the bulk ferment & proof times, the more flavour you'll pack into your bread.
What do you mean by hybrid bread? Also you mention to use bread flour in my poolish, yet all the recipes I've ever seen for bread calls for all purpose flour including the recipe I use located on King Arthur's website. I guess I am a little confused
Is one that has both sourdough starter *and* yeast in it. Sometimes the sourdough is there simply for flavour with the main raising agent being ordinary yeast. Sometimes the sourdough is the main raising agent but has a little yeast added to make the dough behaviour more predictable.
Either way gives you good flavour without the pitfalls of a sourdough-only bread. :-) I believe commercial bakers use the latter method for large-scale sourdough bread production.
We don't have all-purpose flour here in the UK... We have plain flour which we use for things like cakes and biscuits (cookies to you guys over the pond) and we have bread (or strong) flour to well... make bread ;-) Plain flour is around 10% protein content while bread flour is around 14%.
HTH :-)