A lesson in pre-fermenting

First of all, hi guys! I'm sort of new here. Have been lurking around for about 6 months and absorbing as much information as I could, so I guess it's now time to give something back.

On Friday, I was (for like the hundredth time) looking for tips on improving the openness of my crumbs when I stumbled upon Benjamin Holland's post. There he mentioned that it's mixing time when his levain reaches a 2x volume increase. He seemed to have gotten great results so I decided to give it a try.

Early saturday morning made 2 levains. The first one I let ferment to 2x volume, and the second one I watched closely to determine the exact point in time where it reached its peak height. I also made two pre-mixes (autoluyse+salt) that rested for as long as each of the levains lasted (4 and 8h respectively).

I decided to bulk both of them for a 4h period to minimize variablity. The dough made with the young (2x) levain increased by a factor of 0.3x by the end of the 4 hour bulk. Shaping this dough was an experience unlike anything I've had in my many months of baking, it was the lightest, softest dough. It was super easy to shape since it was extremely extensible. I proofed this one for 30min and then into the oven. Needless to say, this resulted on the best looking crust, spring, ear, basically best everything I've gotten so far.

 The crumb was excellent as well, although at 30min it was still a tad uderproofed, still delicious though.

After getting that bad boy out of the oven I thought It couldn't get any better, but oh I was wrong. Shaping the second dough was a bit harder (it was both much gassier and I was trying a new shaping method too). It turned out a bit misshapen, but nothing major. This time, I proofed for 40min and popped right into the oven. Again, amazing everything on the outside!

But the real kicker for this one was the crumb, it was perfectly proofed and the overall hole distribution was much better.

Disclaimer: I know that the pre-mix times were not the same for both loaves, which could be what caused the difference in crumbs. I might re bake the first one with a longer pre-mix sometime soon to test this. An when I say soon, i mean it. I made some amazing sandwiches with these two on Sunday and I'm almost out of bread!