Pugliese experiment
So I had to refresh my two starters today (Clyde - 100% rye, and Gertie - white flour), and don't have time to bake tomorrow. I remembered reading in the Reinhart book that you can replace the pre-ferment in a rustic dough with the barm from a white flour - no need to feed and activate first. Hey, I'm game!
So here's the recipe, from The Bread Baker's Apprentice (still my favorite book!):
biga 2cp/10.8oz Fancy or extra fancy durum flour and unbleached bread flour, in any combination (such as 50/50 blend) 2 1/4cp/10oz Salt 1 1/2tsh/0.38oz Instant yeast 1tsp/0.11oz Mashed potatoes (optional) 1/4cp/2 oz Water, lukewarm (90-100F) 1 to 1 1/8cp / 8-9oz
So after refreshing Gertie, I had about 9.5oz of leftover barm. I topped it up to 10.8oz with bread flour, and I had what looked just like a biga! Lovely :)
I used 50/50 bread/semolina flour for the second ingredient.
The dough is a very wet, rustic dough. Here's what it looked like after about 5 minutes on the hook:
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And after dumping it onto my very well floured counter:
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The dough gets pulled and folded, then allowed to rest for 30 minutes. This gets repeated twice more before a 2-hour bulk ferment.
I'm currently in my second 30-minute rest! More pictures to follow...
-Joe