October 19, 2015 - 9:46am
Combining preferments: yay or nay!?
Hi everyone!
I don't post very often (in fact I have only posted once) but I have been baking for a few years now and love all the ideas and contributions on this site for which I thank you very much!
I wanted to ask you a question:
I have some 65 hydration biga in my fridge with 2% yeast and I was wondering whether anybody has ever tried putting a biga in their multigrain sourdough bread and what the results were?
I am hoping the yeast will provide a good rise and the gluten will provide large holes.
I would love to hear if anybody has tried this!
Thank you very much for any insights!
Share
out there where SD is used in combination with yeast. A small biga or poolish works well in place of the yeast in these recipes. i have even done some bakes with SD, YW and a poolish in a trilpe levain :-)
Since it is used a booster, to speed the slow SD thing up or make rising more consistent... a small one works because a small amount of yeast is usually used in these recipes anyway.
Can you tell me more about combining yeast water and sourdough? Do you combine the yeast water directly with the starter, or first with some flour? (I have never tried yeast water but am curious about it!)
YW and flour. That is what i usually do because the yeast in YW is not very tolerant of acid environments. Mixing it as the liquid in a SD levain would soon make the yeast in the YW dead. Best t keep them separate let them do theor thing in the dread dough. When done as separate levains the YW one which is sweet will compensate for some the sour in the mix and make the bread less sure than a normal SD alone one,
W is a fine replacement for commercial yeast in bread when sour is not wanted or needed. it is actually slower than SD so it works in the mix longer making for a more flavorful bread than one with commercial yeast alone.
I gave yeast water a try for the first time today and consider it a success! 100% whole wheat with sourdough and yeast water (did a separate yeast water levain as dabrownman suggested):
I made the yeast water with some bits of apple and a few raisins; I can't say that I noticed their flavor in the final loaf, but the texture of the loaf was slightly chewier than my usual (I usually use a bit of commercial yeast, which I left out), which I like. Thanks for the encouragement!
I agree with DA. Go for it but watch your fermentation times.
Thanks everyone! Will try and report back!
and lovely light, airy crumb. I used a mixture of 10 grain hot cereal and some kamut. I added a very young levain of 3 hours after feeding as per Chad Robertson's method, bulk fermented for 3 hours with stretches and folds, shaped an retarded in fridge overnight in a banneton.
While stretching (after about 1.5 hours or so) the dough became very stretchy and elastic and I regretted not adding more water in the beginning! It came out of the fridge risen but rather smallish, but while baking the oven spring was amazing. The dough expanded mostly width wise, perhaps also because I used chad Robertson's shaping technique, which is different from my normal batard shaping.
I will definitely be experimenting more with retarding when I have space in my smallish fridge.
Figs, raisins, walnuts and mixed spices following the same principles, but with ww flour. great flavor but a very dense crumb because of all the additions.