I want to make some of the recipes in DL's Local Breads, but I don't want to make his levain from scratch.  I have a great starter that works, do I need to start again with a Levain?

I'm sure this info is on this blog somewhere, but I couldn't find the exact answer I need.  Can someone tell me the difference between BARM/STARTER/LEVAIN/POOLISH/BIGA/PATE FERMENTE/STIFF LEVAIN?  Can you subsitute one for the other, or is one process that different from the other?  Are they basically the same thing, but merely two ways to do the same thing?

Confused.  Help would be great.

Thank you!

Hi folks!, I've been making loaves, for a few months already and I'm quite satisfied with my white bread so far(this is my way to start mastering the craft)although most of the people here are doing either whole wheat or multigrain with their formulas. My question is I would like to make a big batch of biga or poolish then retard them for future use but I don't know how to compute the ratio against the dough eg: let say i would like to use 500 grams flour as base for the dough so how many percent of biga or poolish should i use. I bet big bakeries have their pre ferments always available for their everyday use.  I hope my question does make sense and thanks for considering it. your help wil be highly appreciated.

Ok This is my first post - I have this nagging question after experimenting with my bread making the last yr.

I have been reading reinharts text ( break bakers apprentice) and taken a bread baking class and I have come to the conclusion that

1. Preferments are critical for best tasting bread - however that it doesn't reeally matter - a Starter, biga, poolish, preferment, sponge - they only really differ by water content - so if you make a biga it las less water than a poolish you can use them in the same recipe you just need to adjust the water content. I usually find it very easy just to add a couple cups of flour and some water 1-2 cups, a pinch of instant yeast - the exact amounts are really not that important - just mix up a patch and let it ferment !

2. More confusing to me - is that if you are going to go through the trouble to make a preferment - How is that different from just making the whole dough batch mixing it up (without kneading) and letting the dough preferment 12-24 hours - ???  Then just prepare as usual  adding flour or water ad needed ? seems to create very taste bread for me .

3. Recipe smecifi  - I admit I hate following recipe's - once you develope a feel for the mix -  (just like making pancakes - anyone who has to measure pancake mix and water and cannot just tell when the batter is the way they want it  is well, either completly ocd or ??)  I just get a feel for when the dough is the right consistency, try to get confortable with wetter doughs - add whatever I feel like into the dough, herbs, seeds, oats, barlley, different flours - whatever I have on hand , and all my breads seem to be quite tastey.  So to me it seems like unless you are a bakery and trying to put out the exact loaf all the time - the whole idea is to have fun , be artistic, creative and experiment - don't be a slave to recipes . 

I am interested in your comments .

kj

Going with the usage of these terms in Reinhart, where they have about the same hydration, and a pate fermentee has salt but a biga doesn't (and perhaps a bit less yeast), how does using a biga vs a pate fermentee affect the outcome of a recipe? Will taking a recipe that calls for one and using the other (adjusting for the salt difference in the final dough) change the result in any noticeable way? Has anyone experimented with this?

Eric

Well, sometimes I share victories, but today it's not the case. I am feeling quite miserable about bread baking this weekend.

where do I start?

I am a HUGE Hamelman & Dan Lepard's fan. Every single bread I made from their books turned out great. Then I bought Local Breads and fell in love with the book, read it beginning to end, could not wait to try my first recipe.

I picked "Como Bread", for those who have the book, it is on page222 

it takes a biga that sits overnight in the fridge, and is used for a high hydration dough, to be mixed by the Kitchen Aid, preferably.

Friday eve I made the biga. Saturday morning started the bread - it rises first for 2 - 2.5 hs until doubled in volume. Formed into a ball, rises 1-1.5 hs more, into the oven it goes. I went to the farmers market during the first rise, got distracted, but came back after 2 hs. The dough had already apparently risen and collapsed. I decided to go ahead, shape it and bake it. Result: pancake city!  Flattish looking ball, very very tight crumb (the book mentions very airy crumb, which was what I was hoping for)

I was disappointed, but decided that the best approach would be to make it again right away, being careful about all the timing, catching the dough before it collapsed. Made another biga yesterday, a second batch of dough today. Result: PANCAKE CITY.  Much worse than yesterday, it is pretty much like a frisbee. Crumb not as tight, but... pathetic anyway.

Has anyone made this bread? Could there be something wrong with the recipe? I make plenty of good loaves, my oven is the correct temperature, this time I even went through the trouble of heating the thing for a long time as called for in the recipe.... my yeast is very active, I used filtered water, the biga and the dough both behaved more or less as described in his book.

any advice is more than welcome.... or a baker's shoulder to cry on    :-)

I recently found a recipe by JMonkey for Whole Wheat Buttermilk bread that he posted on July 10, 2006.  A search of TFL will quickly locate the original post for you, and I would recommend that you read it.  The bread he made was based on one of  the recipes from Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book, but JMonkey did a comparison of baking it "straight" and baking with a biga.  His success with the biga version inspired me to try it myself.  I have had very little success with whole grain baking in the past.  Most of my breads were much too heavy, and often had a slightly bitter taste.

JMonkey's recipe was:

***********************************************************************

Biga
5 ¼ ounces -- 150 grams -- 1 cup water
250 grams -- 8 3/4 ounces -- 1 3/4 cup whole wheat flour
1/8 tsp instant yeast

Final dough
All of the biga
1 ½ tsp instant yeast
4 3/4 ounces -- 135 grams-- 3/4 cup warm water
¼ cup honey
1 ¼ cup cold buttermilk
580 grams / 20.5 ounces -- 4 3/4 cup whole wheat flour
2 tsp salt
2 Tbs butter

The night before, make up the biga. Knead it until it forms a relatively smooth dough, and then cover it to sit overnight for about 12-14 hours.

The next day, tear the biga into about 12 pieces and mix it up with the rest of the ingredients. Start kneading -- it'll take about 600 strokes and 20 minutes, but once you're finished, the dough should stretch nicely into a translucent, whitish pane, flecked with bits of bran. This dough may start a bit sticky, but should lose the stickiness and become simply tacky about halfway through. Add water or flour as necessary.

Form the dough into a ball and put it into bowl or bucket. Cover it, and allow the dough to rise for about 90 minutes or so. Poke the dough with a wet finger. When the indention starts to fill in very, very slowly, the dough is risen.

Gently degas the dough, and tuck it back into a tight ball for the second rise. Fold the dough if you wish, but really, after 600 strokes, the dough shouldn't need any additional strength. Once it has risen, divide the dough into two and shape it into sandwich loaves. Place the loaves into pre-greased 8.5 x 4.5 pans. Cover the pans with plastic for the final rise.

Preheat the oven to 350 degree F. (I like my oven a little hotter than Laurel does -- she prefers 325). Once the dough is risen and has crested one to two inches above the side of the pan in the center, slash the loaves as you wish with a serrated knife or razor blade. Personally, I prefer a single slash down the middle, but do whatever makes you happy. Place them in the oven and steam it if you wish (I find it helps with oven spring quite a bit, even with panned loaves), and bake for about 35-40 minutes, turning once to ensure even baking.

The loaves are done when they register 195-200 in the center. Let them cool for one hour before slicing.

************************************************************************************

I modified the recipe by:

• Using unsulfured molasses instead of honey (I was out of honey)
• Kneading was done with my Kitchen Aid stand mixer until the dough was very elastic and had a good "window pane"
• Doing a stretch-and-fold at 45 and 90 minutes, followed by another 1 1/2 hour rise.  The second rise was huge.

The resulting loaves weren't quite as high as JMonkeys, but the crust was beautiful, the crumb light and moist, and the flavor was absolutely wonderful.  There was no bitter taste, and the molasses made a wonderful substitute for the honey.  It also added to the aroma of the bread.  Although the proofed bread had raised to about two inches above the level of the loaf pans, the final loaf actually fell very slightly.  There was great initial oven spring (a water pan was used in the oven and the loaf pans were set on a preheated stone), so I was a little surprised with the fall.  The bread, however, did not seem to suffer in any way.  The crumb doesn't show unusual areas of density that I have seen in other breads that have fallen during baking.  The photo of the crumb below doesn't quite do it justice as I sliced the bread while it was still a bit warm (I couldn't wait any longer!). Any suggestions concerning the fall are more than welcome.

All in all, this is a delightfully light and flavorful whole wheat bread that will be baked at our house on a regular basis. It makes a wonderful sandwich and toasting bread.

I have baked bread for several years now, but just a few moments ago I made my first biga. (It was supposed to be a poolish, but so much for my measuring skills. It's biga.) I want to do the "set it out on the counter overnight in a covered dish" thing with it, to use tomorrow. Question: I have put it in a large tupperware container and snapped down the lid. When I "burped" the lid it occurred to me: should the lid be on loosely? Do the yeast need oxygen? Or is there plenty in there anyway so it's not a worry? Here's hoping I find your responses if you have any comments to help me through my first time. (excited eeeee) Hoshonti

Here is my crack at terminology that is commonly used in bread baking. It's a start, with a hope that with some comments these will be corrected and added on to.

Poolish - A French term. Uses commercial yeast. An aged mixture that is made up of equal amounts of water and flour, by weight, and a small (tiny) amount of yeast. (1)

Biga - An Italian term. Uses commercial yeast. An aged mixture that is made up of water and flour, which may but do not have to be of equal amount. A tiny amount of yeast is also added to this mixture.A Poolish is really just a form of Biga. A Sponge is the English term for Biga. (1)

Starter - An English/American term. An aged mixture that is usually maintained in a very small amount, that is used to start or seed a larger mixture that is then called a preferment. A starter made from commercial yeast is called a straight dough starter and a starter made of wild yeast is called a sourdough starter.

Pate Fermente - A French term. A small piece of dough reserved from the previous batch of bread. This is the only preferment that may contain salt in it.

Preferment -  An English/American term. An aged mixture whose primary purpose is to impart a maximum amount of flavor to the resulting bread. This mixture is allowed to fully ferment before (pre-) being added to the final dough mix. Examples are: Sponge, Poolish and Biga.

Autolyse - A French term. A technique where gluten containing flour and water are mixed and aged for a desired amount of time to arrive at desired gluten development level and flavor characteristics. There are no other ingredients present except flour and water. And flour has to contain gluten.

Soaker -  An English/American term. An aged mixture whose primary purpose is to hydrate the dry ingredients that are to be used in the final dough. The dry ingredients are gluten free.

High Extraction Flour - An English/American term. It is a flour that is between White and 100% Whole Wheat. It has a certain percentage of Bran and Germ removed.

Patent Flour - An English/American term. White Flour which was extracted from the central most part of the endosperm. Is considered to have the highest quality of gluten. (1)

Clear Flour -  An English/American term. White Flour which was extracted from the outer parts of the endosperm. Around the part where the Patent Flour was extracted from. (1)

Notes:

Difference between Starter, Sponge, Biga and Poolish. Well Poolish has equal amounts of water and flour. Biga and Sponge are the same to the best of my knowledge. A Starter is more clearly defined in a professional bakery environment where a small amount of left over preferment is reserved to be used in the next preferment. The amount of preferment mixed contains a small excess that is fully fermented. Then the small excess is extracted to be used in the following preferment, and the current preferment is added to the dough for the current batch of bread.

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(1) Source J. Hamelman "Bread"

Edit 09/14/2008

Today I saw a FAQ page so I thought I'd link to it from here:

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/faqs

Hello.  I have several questions about starters.  Please bear with me being new at this.  First, the starter I am using is 1 cup flour, 1 cup water, 1 tsp yeast.  First question.  Can I use wheat flour in my starter?  Second question.  I have read that after being refrigerated, it will last for two weeks.  Can I just work from this one starter for two weeks and not add to it to make it grow.  In other words, I would like to have a starter, use it and then make another starter.  I don't want one that I have to feed.  Is this possible?  Also, can I add starter to any bread recipe?  Can I use very small amounts of this starter, say 1/4 cup or so.  Is a starter to make your bread sour or flavorful or is it also for its rising capabilities?  Lots of questions here.  Hope someone can answer each one for me, thank you.

Has anyone else made Ponsford's Ciabatta from Artisan Baking Across America?