first time ciabatta, autolyse, preferment questions
hi all,
baker in oakland, calif.
i recently renewed my interest in baking, but having lost interest in the more expensive form of pie-making, have decided to jump into bread-making.
here's a picture of my ciabatta, made from this recipe: http://www.recipezaar.com/29100 [1].
a few notes:
i read about autolysing here, and i gave it a try. i mixed and let rest a cup of flour with 2/3 cup water before adding the yeast/water.
what does the milk do in this recipe? i may have warmed the milk too much..
what temperature does yeast get killed at?
i mostly followed all the directions exactly, except i mixed by hand, not with a stand mixer. actually now that i think of it, i probably didn't mix thoroughly enough, just enough to combine. what effect will this have on the end result?
oh, so i forgot to add salt. it turned out to be pretty important to the flavor.
i noticed there's no kneading this dough. i performed a fold before i formed the loaves.
and that was it.
any feedback would be great.
regarding autolysing, is this a standard bread-making method?
i was under the assumption that breadmaking necessitates much kneading... is this not true?
also, what are the time tolerances on prefermenting/poolish/sponge.. (are those all synonyms?) ? will a 12 hour preferment have a much different
flavor/texture than an 18 or 24 hour preferment?
thanks again for the feedback and answers to questions! there's so much information to absorb from these forums i really don't know where to begin.