May 31, 2017 - 7:21am
making poolish with wholemeal flour
am i right in thinking that a 16 hour poolish with 100% wholemeal flour i won't get the same bubbly surface you would if you used white flour due to the weight of wholegrains in it?
Ive done a recommended percentage of:
100% flour
100% water
0.25% instant yeast
This is for a 15 - 18 hour poolish
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will be much faster so you can cut the time to 10-12 hours or even less depending in the temperature. or cut the yeast to a pinch instead of ,25 g.
I'm just coming to the end of 17 hours at .25% but it was fairly cool so I think I'm ok a somewhat bubbly and has a taste of tang so think I'm good to go - thanks for putting my mind at rest as I thought I'd do float test but then realised that wholegrain will sink unless injected with kryptonite
am I right in thinking I put the remaining amount of yeast into final mix? i.e poolish isn't about using less but more about increasing flavour and complexity through slow fermentation - I've fermented 50% of flour and will now be mixing in rest of ingredients as in original recipe
Yes. The poolish does give yeast some scope to multiply, but most of the poolish-using recipes I have use about 1% yeast as a % of total flour used (in the poolish plus final) with most of that yeast going into the final mix.
cool thanks for that...the one i just used poolish for used 1.5% but had alot of oats in it so im assuming the weight of the wholegrain + oats meant it needed a little more rising power...having siad that i think some recipes use yeast quite liberally and id like to see how far i can go to minimise it...i love making sourdoughs and the slow fermentation process so i think im going to convert most of my recipes to poolish/biga to enable the long slow ferment - suits my schedule better and i like the slow build of flabour...going to start another one today and see how wholegrains effect time as dabrownman said that wholegrains are quicker to ferment...
pre-fermented flour I omit the yeast in the dough completely. Yeast just makes things go faster and it is slow that brings out the flavor in bread. If you are short of time then all bets are off but a 17 hour poolish using the huge amount of flour you did in the poolish will likely be mire than plenty to speed thongs along nicely.
Don't know why you would omit the yeast cause then that's basically a very long autolyse (if I'm reading your post correctly?) I'm only using 0.25% of total poolish flour amount which is roughly 1/8 tsp to 160/200g flour and same in liquid
200 g of of poolish which is b-very yeast rich indeed. If it 50% pre-fermented flour no yeast is needed for the dough at all and you probably made too much poolish even without the extra yeast in the dough. Your ferment and proof of the dough will be very fast as a result.
Im in the process of making another bread and have made another 50% poolish which is currently fermenting away with 1/8 teaspoon (0.25% yeast). Would you suggest I dont add remain remaining yeast (1%) in the final mix and just add the remaining 50% flour, water and other ingredients?
im reading back again and now understand what youre saying danbrownman....youre saying that with a 50% poolish fermented over long period of time (and effectively innoculated) there is no need for more yeast unless there is a time issue...if the poolish is bubbly with a small amount of yeast when im ready to mix then no need to add more yeast if not add more add more.
That is what I am saying - no more yeast is required. In fact you can probably cut the 50% poolish to 25% if you want.
I do that too sometimes! 2 considerations. (1) control of time -- recipes like Hamelman's and Reinhart's are designed to meet a bakery schedule (assuming you can control temperature) and the fresh yeast in the final mix helps that. Otherwise you let the dough take its course and deal with more uncertainty over when you can bake. (2) omitting the final yeast tends to give you a more tangy, sour flavor which may or may not be what you want. I don't think, though, that it's a matter of "rising power." Yeast makes more of itself over time, so with enough extra time you should get same amount of yeast in the dough even if you put in less.
no sour ever results from a yeast bread over a couple of days. The longer it ferments the more flavor it has but not a sour flavor. If you want sour then use a sourdough preferment instead.
Hi dabrownman. Long time...
Acidity is always present in commercial yeast pre-ferments. The primary acid produced by the yeast is succinic acid and it's this that is responsible for the perceived gluten tightening effect whereby resistance is increased and extensibility is decreased. This translates to an increase in dough strength and is one of the reasons a pre-ferment may be utilised.
Fermentation with or without sourdough will always incur a descending pH.
Flour starting at pH 5.8-6.1 will drop to around 5 with enough maturity.
A mature biga is said to be between 5.0-5.2. A long fermented poolish may be as low as 4.8.
A well made poolish baguette has an appreciable acidity. I wouldn't call it sour but it is discernible.
succinic acid. So yeast making this acid is quite normal but it doesn't make enough acid to maj=ke yeast bread taste sour either. If it did people wouldn't like it since most folks don't like sour bread.
Oddly, they have genetically engineered Saccharomyces cerevisiae to produce much more succinic acid on a commercial scale.
If you want sour bread you have to make it with a sourdough culture or add some acid to the mix.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Succinic_acid
http://www.kingarthurflour.com/professional/preferments.html#
Seeking sour is one thing. Development of acidity is another.
Succinic acid in levels produced by yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) during fermentation strongly impacts wheat bread dough properties
Thanks! Yes, I think the confusion is between jump-up-and-down, in-your-face sourness and the modest, but still noticeable, increase in acidity from longer fermentation. I have nothing against sourness. whether a lot or a little -- it's just a matter of being aware as a baker of what effects your choices have.
"just about all bread dough contains S. cerevisiae and both types of lactic bacteria, wether the dough is made with manufactured yeast or raised by a sourdough culture...the LAB in fermented dough tend to build up more noticeably in sour cultures and the breads made from them, making their presence more obvious, but they are also present in commercially yeasted bread dough."
these LAB will start to reproduce and make acid. They just aren't concentrated or in enough numbers, like in a mature SD culture or have enough time when commercial yeast is used to make bread taste sour. There are many different strains of S. Cerevisiae and some do tolerate a lower pH found in SD cultures but there are many kinds of yeast and LAB found in SD cultures all over the world.
There are generally 3 types of LAB.
50 Percent Sprouted 7 Grain Sourdough
Just occurred to me; if I have slow fermented 50% of flour with 0.25% yeast in my poolish should I just add 50% of total yeast (according to original recipe which is 1% total flour which would make it 0.375%) to remaining flour and other ingredients Once poolish is mature? Or will I go as advised and add remaining 0.75% yeast to remaining flour, etc
just to be clear here because im looking at this through misty eyes. after trawling through the net i have various answers to my dilemma in regards to yeast and preferments.
it doesnt make sense to make a long 15 - 18 hour poolish with 0.25% yeast and 50% flour/water only to then mix it with remaining 0.75% yeast in the final mix. Yes there will be more flavour but the dough will rise very quickly and probably get damaged resulting in an inferior bread?
It also makes sense that i mix the poolish (that has 50% total flour) into the final ingredients and go from there with a longer rise and proof and have a great bread...
the other alternative is to add half the remaining yeast (0.375%) to the remaining flour (50% of total flour) and take it from there.
anyone ideas on best way forward.
At the moment i have a bubbly poolish on my table doing very well and to my mind im looking at it like i would a levain....except that i usually use 22% levain in my sourdoughs.
thanks for the help
to be 10-12% so 500 g of total flour only needs 50-60 g of pre-fermented flour. You have 250 g of it about 5 times more than what is needed. All you are doing is making things go very fast and limiting the flavor profile of the bread. Fast is bad when it comes to bread. Slow food is good food just like brown food tastes good.
then why in 'Bread' by Jeffrey Hamelman does he have recipes for 25%, 33% and 50% poolish and biga preferments? all basically starting with a 0.2% yeast in the preferment with the rest going in the final dough after 16 hours or so? Im totally confused. I get what you mean by slow as i generally make sourdoughs and enjoy the slowness of the levain however im getting conflicting information...with the 50% poolish bread today I was going to omit yeast from final dough and started that way and then decided to add 3/4 teaspoon. Not sure what difference it made. The bread didnt really rise. I have yet to cut it open but to be honest i dont think it was ever going to rise as the recipe i was using called for 45% pumpkin seeds, lots of butter as well as 33% wholemeal, 33% rye and 33% bread flour. Hopefully itll taste good and then i can play around with it...
However my biggest issue with this bake was indecision. If theres one thing ive learnt from all my years cooking is that indecision will kill a dish. And thats what i did. changed techniques half way through, changed my mind about yeast. Result. crap bread. Now im making another poolish tonight. I was going to make a simple pain rustique according to a hamelman recipe. It calls for 50% bread flour, 50% water and 0.2% yeast left for 12 - 16 hours - temperature dependent. Then add that + 1.48%yeast to final dough.
I really want to get a handle on poolish and biga as part of my learning curve so need to get this cleared up. Are you basically saying im better off sticking to smaller amounts of preferment and adding yeast in later?
Dan Lepard, who makes sponges (which work well when youre time constrained) adds 50% total flour, total water and total yeast into bowl. Covers and leaves for 2 hours or so and then mixes in final ingredients....think its an old english baking trick
developed poolish and extra yeast added to the final dough that your bread didn't rise. Recipes are crafted to fit a schedule and a flavor profile and your bread had to be extremely fast with all of that yeast in it.
Here is a better post about preferments
http://www.kingarthurflour.com/professional/preferments.html#
@mutantspace. This may be worth a read.
Understanding Dough in more depth by: Didier Rosada and Professor Raymond Calvel
See the section that covers poolish.
thanks for al the info by everyone....to begin. I have trawled the net anf this forum, read Hamelmans book and a few others and in doing so came across an interesting experiment in azeliaskitchen.net in which she too wonders why do you add in commercial yeast in the final dough after making a long preferment. She came to the conclusion that bakers do it to guarantee rise, etc however, by increasing amount of flour in poolish found she didnt need the extra boost in final dough. Heres the link @ http://www.azeliaskitchen.net/a-forgotten-type-of-poolish-sponge-loaf/
My bread was delicious despite the lack of rise. I still believe that having 48% pumpkin seeds and 67% wholegrain in a bread means gravity will insist on keeping the ingredients close to earth. Having said that what got to me was my indecision and lack of knowledge as i couldnt ascertain, diagnose the problem nor find a definitive answer to the issues i had. Either way we ate the bread. It was great and ill just find another way of making it. Half the problem was that it had both sourdough and commercial yeast in it which just made it all the more complicated.
Im not used to using commercial yeast and have only made levains so this is all new.
Since then i have gone back to Hamelmans BREAD and started making pain rustique with 50% poolish. the rsult is delicious. for a 450g flour loaf i put in 1/16 tsp yeast in the 50% poolish and 3/4 tsp yeast in final dough. All works like a charm. Lesson learnt. Most important lesson i learnt was that the poolish is mainly for flavour development and should not be considered in the same way a levain is. That was my mistake. That is not to say you cant but it isnt the main function of it. Historically it was used as a way to bring more flavour to bread and to speed up the baking time for professional bakers.
And it is for all these reasons and all your answers that my wife gives out to me every night about my obsession as i sit there scribbling notes and working out percentages for the next bake. So thank you one and all.
Oh and just about that wholemeal and in answer to @danbrownman I was attempting to use a recipe based on a poolish. Basically i saw a delicious recipe for pumpkin seed bread and tried to change the method. I kind of won and lost.
and @mwilson thanks alot for the link ill give it a read
As you say, 33% wholemeal, 33% rye and 33% bread flour is challenging, even without all that seed. Seems to me the main difficulty with those proportions is going to be gluten development, and there might be a role for a poolish or pre-ferment with just the wheat flours. How did the dough feel? Gluten would seem to me a more obvious culprit than yeast.
it felt fine and the brrad was surprising light....there was tonnes of butter, 14% ,in it too which jut ahortens the gluten strands so i guess it wasnt surprising
@mwilson - just finished reading that article - pretty fascinating stuff...the SFBI have great videos by the way so always worth checking out...never thought id say that on a sunday afternoon : )