I love Hamelman's multigrain breads.  Both the levain version and the preferment version.  My question is, why does he not preferment or use the whole wheat flour in his levains?  I would think, and I am NO expert, that it would enhance the flavor to use part of the whole wheat flour in the preferments instead of the bread or AP flour.  Does anyone have any insight on this?  I think I will try using the whole wheat in the levain this time and see what happens.  I use fresh, hand ground flour.  So I don't know.  Anyne got any ideas on this?

I have started using a predigestion for my WW loaves to compensate for phytic acid, but I seem to be having trouble getting a good rise out of my loaves.  My predigestions have been approx 12-14 hours with 3, 45 min rises after adding the additional ingredients.  Has anyone else had any problems with this? I am wondering if the 14 hours is great for dealing with phytic acid but perhaps breaks down the gluten too much for average sized WW loaves.  Thoughts?

Why make bread using a preferment?  Why not just ferment the total amount of ingredients for the same time as it takes to make the prefermented dough plus the addition of the remaining flour and yeast in the recipe?  Would this not make the bead taste better as the total amount of flour will have been fermented for longer?

hi all,

baker in oakland, calif. 

i recently renewed my interest in baking, but having lost interest in the more expensive form of pie-making, have decided to jump into bread-making.

 here's a picture of my ciabatta, made from this recipe: http://www.recipezaar.com/29100.

Funny how the rye discussions have popped up in the last couple of days. I'd been planning to make the New York Deli Rye from the BBA this weekend. I couldn't find white rye flour locally, and had to mail order some. The bread turned out very different from those I've made with dark rye. Looks great for sandwiches. The book calls for sauteed onions in the starter (which I'd probably like), but I chose to omit them to see what the straight bread is like.

A recipe for white loaf bread (or rolls) that uses a biga preferment.

If anyone wants the recipe and instructions you get it at http://home.earthlink.net/~myjunketc/bigaWhiteLoafBread.pdf