November 6, 2014 - 5:16am
Pre-Ferment and long retard
I'm going to make Hamelman's Country Bread. But I would prefer to alter the schedule and put the shaped loaf in the fridge for a long retard - minimum 8 hours - for convenience's sake. I haven't used pre-ferments or poolishs to any extent.
My question is is there any reason that would rule out a long retard of a loaf made with a 12-16 hour pre-ferment? That means that with a 50% pre-ferment a good percentage of loaf will have a very long retard.
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preferment you want to use. For sourdough i use 10% levain for a 12 -18 hour retard depending on the recipe. Using a poolish instead of SD but the cold really slows down the yeast too. Getting it right for an exact 8 hour retard will take some experimenting.
Don't know if this helps you or not?
It reminds me that I can't make changes to the process without making a change to the finished product. And that I don't have a lot of experience with predicting what I need to do to be successful while initiating change. I think I will first follow Hamelman's instruction as provided and see what the loaf should be like. I wanted to bake a yeast bread and this seemed like a good choice. I'm getting a bit snobby about baking with my own lovely starter.
I've only begun to experiment with different retarding times and amounts of levain and the results can be quite dramatic. I have read your posts re long retards and the explantions. I really think I have to quit my day job because I need more time! The reason I posted the question in the first place is because I tried to make a loaf the Forkish way. What a disaster. I had a bucket of glue on my hands. There was no coming back from that one. And I think it was the difference in time and temperature that I didn't really pay mind to. Not much else it could be really.
Anyway thanks for your comment. I'll spend a little time planning this out.