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Partial preferments?

Radicalkat's picture
Radicalkat

Partial preferments?

Hello,

I have a question about Peter Reinhardt's techniques as outlined in BBA.  In the baguette recipe, he has us make a pre-ferment with essentially half the dough, and then  add the other half of the ingredients the next day.  Why not preferment the whole recipe?  Is there an advantage to prefermenting just half the dough?

Thanks,

Radicalkat

dmsnyder's picture
dmsnyder

Once your pre-ferment has fermented for 12 or so hours, the yeast has consumed a significant portion of the carbohydrate in the flour. By adding fresh flour for the final mix, you are providing fresh food to get the yeast more active. This gets the bread rising through the production of CO2 and results in a better, more open crumb.

At least, that's my reasoning.


David

sonofYah's picture
sonofYah

<blockquote>

In the baguette recipe, he has us make a pre-ferment with essentially half the dough, and then  add the other half of the ingredients the next day.  Why not preferment the whole recipe?  Is there an advantage to prefermenting just half the dough?

</blockquote>

 This is a technique that Reinhart uses in his newest book on Whole grains. I have made 100% whole grain whole wheat usinhg the tecnique given in his book on Whole Grains. I would keep back some of the flour for the final mix like outlined.

dmsnyder is right that the starches could be all eaten up if you preferment all the dough and wait too long to bake. I recommend Reinhart's Whole Grain book.

 Gordon

Soundman's picture
Soundman

Radicalkat,

As someone who has experimented with preferments a lot, I think I know where you're coming from. I have baked a Whole Wheat bread with 60% prefermented flour and it has worked well. (You are bringing out the radical experimentalist in me.)

So here's another thought. It harkens back (yet again, for me) to the Pain a l'Ancienne in Reinhart's BBA. The thing you are after is more flavor. That's what a preferment does, among other things. And as dmsnyder says, you don't want to have your yeast use up all the food in the flour before you mix the final dough.

So, you could try, for example, combining the BBA-Gosselin technique in conjunction with a preferment. That means making your 50% prefermented-flour biga separately and letting it do its thing. In this example you want to refrigerate it as soon as it is ripe. You would also mix, separately, using cold water, 40% of the total flour and the appropriate level of water depending on the total hydration of the formula, and immediately retard it overnight in the fridge. N.B. you are not letting yeast do anything at all to the Gosselin-dough, because there are no yeast in it. You are merely letting enzymes release some of the sugar from the starch in the flour.

The final dough would require 1) letting both the preferment and the Gosselin-dough warm up a couple of hours, so that the final dough temp isn't too cool; 2) cutting the non-yeasted Gosselin-dough into pieces (as well as breaking up the biga into chunks). (The Gosselin-dough will have formed substantial gluten, which is why you need to cut it up.) To these you would add the remaining 10% flour and the remaining water (warm, say 110 dF) and yeast and don't forget the salt! Mix everything into a smooth dough and see what happens!

Soundman (David)

Radicalkat's picture
Radicalkat

Thanks for these responses...

 

Soundman, why put the Gosseli-dough in the refrigerator?  If there is no yeast in it, is there anything to retard? 

I'm very phsyched to try the Gosselit plus preferment formula.  However, I won't be able to bake for a couple of weeks.  I'll let you know how it turns out!

 -Radicalkat

Soundman's picture
Soundman

Radicalkat,

I don't think Reinhart ever explained exactly what the retarding was for, but maybe it slows down the rate the enzymes work on the starches.

I made the Pain a l'Ancienne once and it was sweet and delicious. I just followed Reinhart's formula, with the immediate retarding, but I noticed that Reinhart used yeast and Gosselin did not. So Gosselin's is considered (by some) to be a long and retarded autolyse.

This topic got something of workout on this post of mine:

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/8445/never-give-sourdough

Eventually dmsnyder found an email from Reinhart to his readers detailing Gosselin's formula. Check it out!

I look forward to hearing about your experiments!

Soundman (David)