April 4, 2020 - 3:37pm
Jim Lahey's old dough biga questions
Hello
I just got into bread making and love it. I mostly use Jim Lahey's 2 bread books for now. In his biga recipe he suggests using old dough. When I try this my dough is very underproofed. Any suggestions on what could be going wrong?
I am using 5 gram biga/400 grams flour, so 5%, should I try upping the biga?
Also, when I dissolve the biga in water, does it matter how dissolved it is? I read that if you use a whisk to break up the biga it will actually destroy some the properties, now sure how true that is. I was thinking about trying to just put the big in with water and flour and not dissolve to see what happens.
Thanks in advance
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I am using 5 gram biga/400 grams flour, so 5%
First of all, that's 1.25%, not 5, second it's nowhere near enough. When I grow a sponge off a piece of old dough I use 10%, that is 40 grams of old dough to 400 grams of flour and it is still a very slow process.
I read that if you use a whisk to break up the biga it will actually destroy some the properties...
If you are talking about using a small percentage of biga used to start a new dough - that's a crock of bull, you can mix it any way you like. For the final dough, when 60% of your flour is in the biga - you probably should not.
Thanks for your feedback. I unfortunately had a typo in the original post, it is 20grams biga/400 grams flour. With that said, still less then 10% as you mentioned. Are there any books you can recommend that discusses using old dough as biga? I find it would be an easier process for me to work with for my schedule and also I find the sourdough taste of bread can sometimes be distracting..
You mentioned even 10% is still a slow process, are you talking more then an 18 hour bulk ferment?
Any book that uses pate fermentee would do. Hamelman has it, and so does Reinhart, but both of them basically use a specially prepared stiff preferment. I use actual dough from the previous batch, and in a slightly different way - I mix 25 g of dough with 250 g of flour, half the salt, and 165 g +/- g of water and give it a full rise, then add another 250 g. of flour, the remainder of salt, and water to desired hydration, and make up the final dough. That takes 2.5-3 hours to rise. So it's pretty much a 24 hour process for me. Picked it in a French book.
I agree, that’s not nearly enough biga. One of my favorite recipes, uses even more...a 160%. I am new here, but not new to baking bread. I would like to post pictures, of the recipe I use, from a Peter Reinhardt book, for Italian bread. Is posting pictures of a recipe from a cookbook allowed?
There are technical differences, I'm sure. But another way to reduce starter maintenance is to use a stiff or firm starter, 50-60% hydration, as opposed to a liquid or 100% hydrstion starter. it needs feeding less often than a 100% hyd starter.
If you use old "carry over" dough, then for consistency sake, you would still want to build a levain or "new biga" that is a knownquantity, (ie, it rose X% in Y hours at Z temperature), that you would add to the final dough. The old dough is the "seed culture" for a new biga/levain. And... that is as much work as building a new levain from liquid starter.
I used to keep a firm starter in addition to a 100% one, but even though it required less feedings, it took longer to feed because I thought I had to disolve the firm starter in water before adding the feed flour. either way I had to weigh flour, water, and mix it in. When feeding a firm starter, I suppose you could just knead the new water/flour into the firm starter at the same time, but I think that takes a couple minutes, as opposed to a quick stir-stir with a wet starter.
But once I got my routine down onthe 100% hyd starter, each feeding became routine and quick, weighing the water and flour right into the container. I feed the wet starter every 5 or 6 days, and don't keep much. It sits inthe fridge, and I usually feed it the night before a bake, or in the morning when I mixdough in the evening.
Lots of methods. We all choose what suits us, and our schedules.