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.

Baguettes

Baguettes crumb

The latest episode in my ongoing quest for a classic baguette.

 Today's attempt was with the Poolish Baguette formula in Jeffrey Hamelman's "Bread." I made the poolish last night and made the dough and baked the breads this afternoon. I used Guisto's Baker's Choice flour, which makes a dough with a lovely, silky, soft, extensible quality. It's a pleasure to work with this dough.

 While I ended up with a wonderful tasting bread - crunchy crust and sweet tasting crumb, I was disappointed in the lack of bloom. I do believe my scoring of the loaves was good. I believe I was overly concerned about underproofing the loaves and ended up over-proofing them. If anyone with more baguette experience (and success) than I has other thoughts and suggestions, I would really appreciate them sharing. Making "the baguette of my dreams" remains a dream for now.

Here are photos of the baguette just after forming and placing on the couche and when proofed, just before baking:

Baguettes shaped

Baguettes proofed

Minor frustrations aside, today's breads were thoroughly enjoyed with dinner.

Baguette and Sunflower Seed Rye slices

David

Happy weekend! I made baguettes for the first time in a long time today. BBA's poolish baguettes. One mistake...the recipe, er formula, calls for 7 oz. of poolish. I made half a recipe of poolish from the book, which is really more like 11 oz., and dumped it all into the final dough. ooooops. But what are you gonna do with 4 oz. of leftover poolish?

This dough gets 4 hours of fermentation and about an hour of proofing. The baguettes came out sorta pretty, I thought:

Hi all,

I am new to this forum, and was seeking some advice.

I have prepared a poolish using active yeast, brown sugar, water/flour to equal parts.

Kinda forgot about it sitting there on the side, this was 2 days ago. It is covered with cling film.

My question is, would the poolish still be ok to use, or should I just start again?

Any advice would be greatly received.

Thanks

Cain

I realize that I seriously risk tanking my whole grain cred, here, but lately ... I've been taking a shine to poolish. It'd been a long time since I'd worked with yeasted pre-ferments, and aside from an occasional baguette here and there, I'd not make a serious white bread in quite some time.

But after the New Year, in the course of just a couple of days, I made three poolish baguettes and one poolish ciabatta.

I used Jeffrey Hamelman's masterpiece Bread as a guide.

I'm a new baker, and have been trying out a few new recipes from some of the books that I've bought.  The one I tried the other day required a poolish starter that was suppose to be able to be refrigerated for up to three days; however, when I checked on the poolish in the fridge today (day 2), there was water covering my dough.  Is my dough ruined?  I wasn't sure what to do, so I took out a spatula and mixed it together.  But it was still quite runny, well beyond the point of batter which was expected.  Any help would be soooo appreciated!!!!!  

Hi everyone,

I'm a newbie from Germany. New to this forum and not very well doing with English.

With baking bread I am not new.

My favorite breads are wholemeal rye-wheat breads or rye breads made with sourdough. Sometimes just a little yeast added. Also rye-wheat breads with whole seeds and grains.
Real rustic breads.

And also wheat breads with a poolish made of a tiny bit of yeast.

I am not perfect with baking bread, and so I hope to learn a lot here.

Harry

I found the folllowing guidelines for Poolish on the Internet:

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The Poolish

This method is composed of two phases. The first phase is the preparation of a semi-liquid dough comprised of yeast and an equal quantity of flour and water, which is prepared some hours prior to the preparation of the final dough. The second phase is the preparation of the final dough prior to baking.

So for the first time this week, I got together some people would had expressed interest in starting up a bread baking club and we crowded into my tiny kitchen and baked a dozen baguettes!