November 23, 2008 - 10:22am
sourdough/starter
Hello. I am looking for a bread recipe where I can make a spone/starter either the night before or in the morning and then use this starter in the loaf that day. In other words, I don't want to keep a starter to feed, I want a starter to use immediately. Thanks for any recipes. sandy
Share
Hi Sandy,
It sounds like what you're looking for is a poolish or a biga. Those are preferments that you start the night before, but they are not "starters" in that they use commerical yeast. There isn't any instant way to get a naturally fermented starter, that I know of.
A poolish or a biga is created by taking some of your flour and water and a tiny bit of yeast and mixing it together and letting it rise for 10 - 16 hours, then incorporating that back into your bread recipe. It does give a wonderful flavour. A poolish is more liquid (e.g. a 1 to 1 ratio of flour to water by weight) whereas a biga is drier, and a bit more difficult to incorporate back into your recipe.
Do a search here on poolish or biga and you'll get lots of info.
:-Paul
Incidentally, as an addendum to Pablo's comments, it's important to point out that it's simply not possible to create real, honest-to-goodness sourdough without a real, honest-to-goodness, fed and maintained starter. There's just no shortcutting that part of the process.
I agree, it sounds like you might be looking for a poolish or biga. That does really deepen the flavor of the bread, though it is not the same as a sourdough.
But this does bring up an interesting question.... is it possible to grow a wild starter, dry it in appropriate increments, then take it out and mix it in ingredients the night before and bake bread the next day? I thought the KA pain de campaign starter that you can get (as well as other packet starters that they have) did that, or am I mistaken?
Keeping a starter is really not that difficult. While the IDEAL would be a steady stream of on-the-counter, twice-a-day feedings (according to some), it is possible to keep one in the fridge for a long time between feedings. That is exactly what I did with two, and then revived them about two weeks ago. If you did not wait MONTHS between baking sourdough like I did, you would probably have to baby them less to get them going. That might be a workable solution for you.