August 18, 2019 - 8:43pm
Trouble incorporating biga in 50/50 white/wheat bread
I am relatively new to bread baking and recently tried a 50/50 white/wheat bread with biga from Ken Forkish’s book. (Which has been extremely helpful). However, I had a lot of trouble incorporating my biga into the rest of the bread dough. You’ll notice in my picture the biga is the white part of the crumb (which bubbled pretty nicely), and the wheat is the rest (which was much more dense than the rest of the bread since it didn’t mix). The crust turned out amazing but I could not incorporate the biga enough because of how thick it is. I know It is less hydration than a poolish but how can I incorporate it enough? Any thoughts?
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Maybe try a different one. I would recommend watching a Trevor Wilson video - I like his mixing techniques a lot more than FWSY.
Here is one of his videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxfbiGto4R8
I did use pincer method. I will check out this one you suggested! Thank you
Not sure on your mixing method, are you using a stand mixer? If so, what is your mixing time and do you flip your dough over in the bowl once or twice during the process? I assume you cut your biga up into small chunks and throw them in as the mixer is running? Stand mixers are generally not very good at developing dough like spiral mixers, so as a next step, I would consider converting your biga into something with higher hydration (like a sponge). It takes a little recalculating of your formula but it's easy to do and I can help you with that if you want. You will not notice any significant difference in your final bread.