The Fresh Loaf

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Poolish AND autolyse - possible?

IgorL's picture
IgorL

Poolish AND autolyse - possible?

Hello,
I am new to this site, and love it!  I've been baking bread in a machine on and off for a while, experimenting with my own recipes, and now moved to making bread by hand in the oven.  This site is really helpful!  Attached is the photo of my first "from scratch and by hand" loaf, using same recipe as I used in the bread machine with preferment.  Looked and tasted great!

Now, the actual question: is it possible to use both preferment and autolyze?  I used 1 cup of flour and 1 cup of water with 1/2 tsp AD yeast in my polish (I believe this is the term with preferment mix with equal parts of flour and water, right?).  Since my recipe calls for 4 cups of flour and 1 3/4 cups of water, that left only 3/4 cup of water for 3 cups of flour for autolyze, and that mix was extremely dry.  What do people do? Use one or the other?  Don't make preferment quite as wet?

I decided to add 1/2 cup of water to the initial mix, and that brought it to an expected consistency, but of course when I added my preferment mix, the resulted mix was extremely watery, so I had to add flour little-by-little (probably 1/4 cup total) until I got a very wet dough, but at least it resembled dough. :-)

It's proofing for the first time now, and I will still try making bread from it, but I don't like that I had to improvise that much.  I would really appreciate any suggestions, and will post a picture of the result, assuming it comes out OK. 

 

Lechem's picture
Lechem (not verified)

Poolish is of equal parts flour and water by weight, not by cups. So if you have a recipe of 500g flour + 300g water and you wish to do a 50% poolish then you'd preferment 250g flour + 250g water. Get used to weighing as it makes much more sense.

It would not be possible to do an autolyse as you'd only have 50g water left. A poolish improves a bread just like an autolyse improves a bread even if not in exactly the same way/method. You wouldn't have throw in every single bread improver to produce a nice loaf.

If you wished to incorporate an autolyse too then go for a biga (like a poolish but not as hydrated, more dough like). This way there's enough water left to autolyse the rest of the flour.

Take the same 500g flour + 300g water.

You can do a biga of 250g flour + 150g water.

And you can then also do an autolyse of 250g flour + 150g water.

Never done this before but don't see why not. Can't do any harm, can it?

suave's picture
suave

Poolish is equal amount of flour and water by weight, not volume.  Also, adding so much yeast pretty much defeats the purpose of preferment, at least as far flavor development is concerned.

Lechem's picture
Lechem (not verified)

Got caught up in the weight vs volume and how to get around using both methods in one recipe that I didn't spot how much yeast was used.

Yes. Agreed!

Lazy Loafer's picture
Lazy Loafer

Yes, same comments as above. If you are going to pre-ferment a good portion of your flour there's really no reason to autolyse the rest of it, particularly if it is mostly (or all) unbleached (white) wheat flour. For a one-loaf poolish I would probably only use 1/8 tsp of yeast, then maybe add another 1/8 or 1/4 tsp to the dough itself. I'd mix the fermented poolish with the dough water, then mix in the flour, salt and additional yeast and go from there.

If you have a largish proportion of whole grain flour you can autolyse that or 'soak' it while the poolish is fermenting, then mix them together with the salt and a bit more yeast.

IgorL's picture
IgorL

Thanks, that actually makes sense.  My flour for this bread is all KA bread flour, no whole wheat used.  I also would like some clarification on the yeast amount.  My recipe calls for 2 1/4 tsp yeast total for 4 cups of flour.  Is this too much yeast?  Perhaps it was needed for a bread machine, but not needed for bread made manually, especially with preferment?

Lazy Loafer's picture
Lazy Loafer

The whole point of a preferment is to get an active colony of yeast going and developing flavour before mixing the main dough. Just a tiny bit of yeast will eventually colonize the whole preferment (and dough) given time. This can be around six hours and up to 12 hours or more. If your preferment is bubbly, billowy and floats on water it will rise the whole loaf without much trouble! 2 1/4 tsp of yeast for one loaf is okay for bread machine recipes where the entire cycle happens in three to four hours, but there is no time to develop flavour. All you get is a lot of gas from all that yeast and the bread usually tastes like store-bought. I made bread machine bread for years and was never really happy with it.

IgorL's picture
IgorL

Thank you all for your comments. My idea about equal volumes and the name poolish came from here actually: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/lessons/tentips_9_use_a_preferment.  I also increased the amount of yeast as suggested in that post, since my yeast is stored in the fridge (per instructions on the jar), and it's pretty cool in the house now, so it hardly bubbles even after I use tepid water and leave it on the counter overnight.  From now on however, I'll simply use the term "preferment".  

So, bottom line is - it sounds like I cannot use both preferment and autolyse, so I won't attempt that again.  I am still trying to save that overly wet dough that's sitting in my bowl now. :-)

Suave, Lechem - why did you say that it was too much yeast in my preferment?  I thought the main idea was to get the yeast going and very active before it's used to make the dough, right?

jimbtv's picture
jimbtv

All good advice on this thread.

Preferments can take on several forms so you might still want to use the term "poolish". Levain, biga, sponge... all are preferments so poolish defines the type of preferment you are using. I use both poolish and levain in some of my breads.

As I understand it, the purpose of a poolish is to develop flavor by allowing the yeast to digest the flour/water mixture. This action also improves the color of the crumb. Very little yeast is needed, like a pinch, for a 10 - 12 hour preferment. I might use a pinch of yeast in 650g of flour and 650g of water.

One of the cautions about too much yeast is that, once it has processed the starches and sugars, it begins to go after the gluten. If this happens your gluten will be depleted when you add it to your final mix and then it's an uphill battle to regain the structure needed to support oven spring.

Temperature control and timing are key in managing fermentation. The action will still happen whether your environment is a little cooler or warmer but it might not happen on YOUR time schedule. Practice will dial this in.

 

Jim

Lechem's picture
Lechem (not verified)
Lazy Loafer's picture
Lazy Loafer

Thanks Lechem, that's very useful!

Lechem's picture
Lechem (not verified)

Is a nice recipe to follow. I stumbled across this website (to find out it's a popular one) when I first started. Nice recipes.

IgorL's picture
IgorL

Toda Lechem, a good article indeed.  My creation is in the oven at this time, I tried salvaging it as much as I could, did a few stretch-n-fold, and let it rise towards the end.  The dough is extremely gassy (I could see large bubbles when I did final shaping), and it was so wet I could not even score it, as the blade was just getting stuck and dragged through the dough.

Since I am way off any recipe now, I am going by my gut feel, and baking at 450 F for 20 min in a covered Dutch oven (the dough would not hold any shape otherwise), and then will do another 10 min with lid off.  Will report results. :-)

Lechem's picture
Lechem (not verified)

My pleasure. I find poolish, biga, pate fermentee (old dough) takes ordinary regular yeasted breads into something not only far more flavoursome but interesting to work with as well. I enjoy the whole process, and flavour, of sourdough which is what I prefer. These methods for yeasted breads brings it almost on par. Which of course is the whole purpose for these pre-ferments.

Looking forward to hearing results and see where you'd like to take it from here.

IgorL's picture
IgorL

Well, in case someone is interested in the result: since the dough was still a bit on the wet side when it was time to put it into oven, it got stuck to the sides of the Dutch oven (the bottom was fine because I sprinkled it with corn meal).  Baked for 20 min at 450 F covered, then another 20 min uncovered.
The loaf ripped when I tried removing it from the Dutch oven (was I supposed to wait for it to cool down first?).  The taste however is the best of any bread I made so far.  The bottom/side crust is nice and crunchy (top crust wasn't really a crust), and the crumb is nice and even, with medium-size holes, very fluffy yet pleasantly chewy.  Probably the result of stretch-n-fold several times while I was deciding what to do with the dough.

 

Here're my photos: https://1drv.ms/f/s!AoD9VrwREdLLo7M0NuJ-RsAkm7WDlQ