May 8, 2013 - 10:53am
poolish
Hi, I am baking some of my yeasted breads with a poolish which I feed with a pinch of instant yeast. could I replace this pinch of yeast with a glob of leftover levain? The final dough would have yeast again.
Thanks for your input. Barbara
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You might be interested in reading
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/32383/old-dough-vs-natural-levain
Lots of good information, relavant in some of the comments.
I think your levain might be viable, but weakened after 24 hours. Consider feeding it, or just keeping a piece of bread dough.
David G
I have been making my everyday yeasted bread with a portion of my rye starter discards. As I start feeding my rye, getting ready for a bake, I've been placing the discards into a jar and into the frig. l was using about a 60g poolish for a single loaf of yeasted bread that is 100g ww flour and 200g ap flour. Once I started playing with the rye starter, I've been using 60g of sarter instead of the poolish. It works very well and adds another layer of flavor with the rye.
Theresa
I have tried replacing commercial yeast with levain (not quite discard but refreshed one as I never have discard) to make poolish a quite few times with my regular recipes for baguette, focaccia, etc. It works alright, but it makes slightly different result. I always find it produces slightly denser crumb than yeast-based one and definitely different flavour/aroma.
Good question as I'm also experimenting with my starter. I'm definitely bookmarking the link for a more indepth understanding of this very complex subject. Thanks for posing the question!!
Judy
the other way all the time. A poolish or biga can take 12 to 24 hours depending on how much yeast you use and a SD levain can take 12 - 24 hours to build depending on how much starter (or left over levain) you use. If you know how long each takes to be ready to bake a loaf of bread the switch is no worries. You just won't get any sour out of the commercial yeast.
Happy baking