Hello and Request for Help with Terminology
Hello to All,
I am a new member, actually 2-weeks-and-32-minutes new. I have been faithully reading the posts of last two weeks and I am learning a great deal, but today, being a novice I am, the confusion took over.
I have decided to bake two kinds of bread today with my wild-yeast sourdough mother starter: 1 - Country French Sourdough; 2 - Pate Fermentee Sourdough Baguettes (both from this incredible forum). The first bread called for fermented levain made from the fermented firm sourdough starter (I assumed that was my sourdough mother starter). The second bread asked to create fermente using SanFran Starter at 100% hydration (again, I assumed to use my sourdough starter, another assumption here that fermente is indeed the Pate Fermentee as per recipe title). Needless to say, when it came to dough making, I mixed up the ferments and used the Pate Fermentee for the recipe that asked for the levain, and vice versa.
I know, I know... being a beginner, I should have not embarked on this trek, two kinds of bread on one day - that is too much. Agreed!
Here however, comes my cry for help. Would you be so kind and help me sort through this terminology. Yes, I have read the Glossary, and as it explains some of the terms, it does not address all of the names we seem to use on this forum.
I will be very appreciative if someone could create a kind of an exchange table for the following terms; (by exchange I mean putting terms under the same name, if they happen to mean the same thing, like e.g. mother starter (SanFran starter)).
Here is the list of terms: sourdough mother starter, SanFran starter, fermented levain (is it the same as levain?), fermente, fermented firm sourdough starter (is there a non-firm one?), poolish, biga, sponge, pre-ferment, pre-fermented dough (possibly the same as pate fermentee?).
I thank you all very kindly for this and for your willingness to share your fantastic bread expertise on this forum, where people like me can do all this learning for free.
Happy baking,
Gosia