March 22, 2011 - 6:27am
What Is The Difference Between a Starter and a Preferment?
My wife and I are beginning to learn the techniques involved in baking bread. So many new terms to learn, so many steps to master. We appreciate this forum as the readers here have already helped us tremendously.
Our question now is the difference between starter and preferment. We were advised to use a preferment to create more flavor and possibly larger holes in our foccacia loaves. While reading about preferments we came across the term "starter" which we had heard before. We thought starter was only used in sourdough bread.
Can someone describe these two aspects, and point us to literature or websites that would be helpful in our journey to the percfect loaf?
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Is attempting to standardize terms so that when bakers talk to each other we understand what we are saying. They have technical writeups on these terms in their publication "Breadlines" - but you must be a member to access them on line.
But to go on.
Preferment is a generic term applied when a certain percentage of flour (or other ingredients) from the overall formula is fermented by itself before adding the rest of the ingredients for the final mix. Commercial yeast can be used or sourdough (or levain) can be used as the leavening agent.
When commecial yeast is used in a prefement we use terms like "poolish" (meaning a 100% hydration preferment made with commercial yeast) or "biga" (meaning a more firm - about 60% hydration preferment made with commercial yeast)
Starter is a mature sourdough (or levain - or wild yeast) culture. Many bakers keep an amount of "storage starter" which is constantly refreshed and then remove a small portion of it (called "seed") to be the leavening in a preferment (just to be confusing, now itself called a levain or sourdough). Some bakers manage their starter in such a way that they can use the starter as a preferment without going through the intermediate process. Controversy rages on the "right" technique.
There are other preferment styles such as the "sponge" (usually made with commercial yeast and usually fermented for a shorter time than a poolish or biga) and special preferments that will contain eggs or milk with the flour.
But "preferment" is the generic term - with "starter" being more specific.
Hope this helps.
Starters and pre-ferments are the same thing but different. Not to be confusing but they can mean the same thing to one person and another to the baker in the next county.
I consider a starter to be a sourdough term describing a quantity of water and flour mixed with a "seed" of pre-fermented dough that innoculates the mixture with wild yeast spores and the bacteria that help make the sourdough's character. That's just my opinion and I'm happy with that.
What I consider pre-ferments are made with yeast, usually baker's yeast, active dry yeast, or instant dry yeast, water, flour, and sometimes a bit of salt. The hydration level usually is used to describe whether the pre-ferment is a biga, a poolish, a sponge, or pate fermentee. Not everybody sees it my way. If you will read Eric Kastel's "Artisan Baking", he briefly describes the differences very well. Once somebody gets through that, then they can take their investigation much further if they so desire.
Besides Kastel's book, I suggest that you read Hamelman's "Bread", Rose Levy Berenbaum's "The Bread Bible", and many of the other books that are mentioned in the book review area of this site. By all means, use your local library to borrow these books first. Most the books aren't cheap and you'll often find that you're not making a connection with the author's ideas so move on to the next one that sounds interesting. Many of the folks who post here end up buying several books even though they seem to cover the same subjects to someone that doesn't bake bread. Don't listen to them, they don't understand. The books aren't the same and you'll be able to go back to them time and again. You'll find something new or you'll finally get the author's intent and have a big "AHH, HA!" moment.