Greetings

I'm trying to think of ways to slow down a poolish..

I bake once a week, and I use a combination of both the old dough & poolish methods: I always take about a cup of last week's proofed dough, and keep it in the fridge for next week's baking, to use instead of yeast. The night before baking I take the old dough out, keep it on the counter for an hour, then mix it with a 100% hydration poolish that has all my recipe's water and an equal amount of flour. The next day, about 9 hours later, the poolish reaches its peak breaking point (I know this when cross indentations start to show up on the poolish surface) I then add the rest of the flour and other ingredients, knead and proof.
The problem is that this cycle takes about 14 hours. My baking should be ready for my family by 6 pm, which means I should start making my poolish at 4 am! ..so inconvenient. I need to slow down my poolish about 4 hours, so that I can start the poolish at 12 am.

Here is a few ideas that I'll try this weekend..

• keep poolish flour in fridge to use it chilled
• use cold water from the fridge
• use old dough right from the fridge without letting it sit on the counter
• add recipe's salt to the poolish
• keep the poolish in a colder spot (near a window) instead of kitchen counter

Do you think those tricks could buy me 4 more hours?
I know I can just retard the poolish in the fridge, but a container for 2kg of dough plus expansion would occupy much space there, plus I don't know the time it would need to peak in the fridge (any idea?)
If you have any other ideas, please share them with me..

Many thanks.

I've had the AB in 5 minute a day bread dough in my refrigerator for about two weeks. Do you think it is still safe to eat?

I wasn't planning to make baguettes in my seven day bread making challenge to myself, but this morning I realized that my refrigerator was being taken over by bread byproducts.   In addition to my whole wheat sour dough starter and rye sour, I had the leftover levain from the pain de compagne I made the other day, as well as the bread equivalent of a chain letter - a white flour starter for Amish Friendship Bread that a friend dropped off the other day.   I had no intention of making the friendship bread.   It has most likely never been cooked in an Amish kitchen, since it calls for a box of instant vanilla pudding in the batter.    But the starter looked fine and healthy and I've been feeding it for a couple of days.   So I decided to mix the levain and the "Amish" starter together, add some salt and make a couple of baguettes.   The thing that has been holding me back from making baguettes is I don't have a couche or a baguette pan, and I am hesitant to run out and buy them until I get a better sense of what type of bread I want to make on a regular basis.   So I just set these baguettes out on a board, and let them flatten out as they would while rising.    So these don't look like much, and I'm sure whole wheat baguettes would be considered an abomination by some, but they are actually quite flavorful, and I'm hoping that I will be able to figure out how to make these (or something like them) again.

Now I'd better take a break for a day or two to give my family a chance to catch up on all the bread!

I have a question on the use of old dough.  I read somewhere that we can freeze old dough,  which I did to mine, probably about 14 days old. Now I'm taking out to use to try out on my Polaine de Champagne again. 

I took out from my freezer and refridgerator to defrost, not counter top. It looks like the yeast is still active.  Am I doing this right? should I have just defrost it within a short period and use it?  The colour and smell still stays good.

I saw a discussion on refreshing the old dough.  Can I just use it as it is,  throw and mix into my dough or I should at least refresh it first?

My three-day, rotational, Country White dough...and first attempt at blogging.

I bake this bread every third day or so, and it pretty much always turns out the same.  The original recipe is the basic white dough from Richard Bertinet's "Dough", which I absolutely love.  I stumbled upon this process one day by accident.  

I woke up early one Saturday and decided it was a good day for some fresh bread.  After mixing up the dough, and putting it in the oven to rise (I usually use the oven with the light on trick), my wife reminded me that we had to get ready to leave for the day...oops.  I slid the dough into an oiled plastic bag, and popped it into the refrigerator.  

Well, as we all know, life happens fast.  I kept remembering that dough ball in the fridge, but didn't seem to have time to bake it.  Finally, a few days later I had the crazy idea to use it like a starter.  I have since read that this isn't a crazy idea, but a pretty common one.  Now it's become my bread of choice.  Every few days I take the bag of dough out of the fridge, chop it into thirds, and make three batches of the original recipe, adding a third of the old dough to each.  I've even gone as far as a week and a half between baking, which makes a deliciously sour loaf!

A few days early, mix up this dough and stash it in an oiled bag in the refrigerator:

18 oz white bread flour

12.5 oz water

2 tsp kosher salt

1.5 tsp instant yeast

When you're ready to bake, here's what I do.

First, take your dough out of the refrigerator, and divide it by weight into three equal portions.  Take one portion, and cut it up into little strips or balls about an 1x1 inches.  The smaller it is, the easier it is to mix into the dough.  Measure out your water.  If the dough is really cold, I use pretty warm water.  Plop your old dough into the water and let it hang out while you measure out your other ingredients.  You end up making the recipe three times, so I like to get all the old dough in separate water portions, with three bowls of dry ingredients ready, too.

I pour the first batch of water / old dough into the Kitchenaid bowl with the paddle attachment, and mix on low for a few minutes until it's pretty well homogeneous.

I mix the flour, salt, and yeast in a bowl by swirling it with the dough hook by hand.

Next, I pour the dry mixture on top, replace attachments with the dough hook, and turn the machine on to level 2 for two minutes.  If it doesn't seem to be picking up the flour as well as I like, sometimes I stop the machine, and scrape the bowl with the hook a few times.

After two minutes, I turn the machine up to level four for seven minutes.  Notice it's a nice, wet dough.

I turn the dough straight out onto a floured surface, and tri-fold it into a ball.  I put this in a floured bowl, and place in the oven until risen double.

After the first rise, I gently pull it into a square, and tri fold it again.  I put it back in the bowl, and rise it in the oven for a second time.

After this rise, I square it, and form the final loaf.  I put it on a floured tea-towel.  I put a 12 inch dutch oven, with lid in the oven and preheat it to 525F

Pretty much by the time the oven is pre-heated, I take the dutch oven out and set it on a cutting board.  I flop the dough into it, put the lid on, and put it back in the oven for 20 minutes.  

After 20 minutes, I remove the lid and bake for 15 more minutes, or until it's nice and golden brown.

Now, just do it again.  The third batch I bag up and save in the refrigerator for next time.

This bread makes really yummy, crispy toast.  We ate it just this afternoon as chicken salad sandwiches.  It's our all-purpose bread.

Hi --

You guys were so helpful in sharing ideas for using "leftover" sourdough starter (so far, I've made the English muffins and that wonderful banana bread, which was DEVOURED here, by the way ...). So, I wanted to return the favor and share this yummy sandwich bread I made today that also calls for "leftovers." The recipe, from Rose Levy Beranbaum,  uses "old dough," which I had in the fridge from some English muffins the other day.

It turns out a very flavorful, sturdy 50-percent wheat bread that's great for sandwiches.

You can see pictures and get the recipe at Flour Girl.

Happy baking!

Flour Girl

OK so I decided to try this recipe from The Village Baker, which was the real reason I made plain ol' baguettes the other day. It calls for either whole wheat or rye flour or both in the recipe, but I had some KA organic whole wheat lying around so I just used that.

So I first got the yeast going and then I cut my piece of old dough up into little chunks.

I mixed the two together and then added the flour and put it on the mixer. After a 20 minute autolyse I added the salt and mixed it for about 8 minutes, then I rolled it out and folded it on the bench for a while followed by an hour first rising, then a punch, then another hour. Here it is after the second rising.

Then I flattened out all of the air and shaped it into a boule!

I have no round baskets, so I improvised as I do so often when baking at home. This is just a small mixing bowl with dinner napkin liner.

After two hours of proof time we were finally ready to go!

In my ongoing quest to keep my crappy oven hot, I preheated the big pot that I use as a cover along with the oven. I kept it pegged at 550 degrees for an hour before I put the bread in. This is a very hot oven temperature to be working with in a conventional kitchen, if you try these methods, please be careful! I quickly off loaded the boule onto the stone and then gently put the cover on. Then I closed the oven quickly, turned it down to 450; after ten minutes I removed the cover and finished it off.

Once it was at the desired color I shut the oven off and let the boule sit in there for five minutes to crisp up a bit.

And now for the glamour shots. The taste was just lovely, overall I am quite happy with my two day adventure!

I guess I'll make some sourdough next!

Happy Baking!!!

I am looking for info on an unusual rye "old dough" starter...my 75 yo dad (born in Hungary/Slovenia) recalls his mom starting her rye breads with a hunk of old dough that was permitted to dry out.  A day or two before she was ready to bake, she would crumble this dried dough into water and once it started to form a "sponge" she was ready to bake.

I will have to check with him if the bread was 100% rye, but I suspect so...they were poor and wheat was hard to come by.

 I have looked in various books (by no means exhaustive, yet!) and the closest I've seen was Nancy Silverton's liquid starter which can be dried into flakes.

Anybody?

thanks,

Paula