Am I committing a cardinal sin by putting my poolish in the refrigerator?
I started my poolish for my second attempt at Hamelman's baguettes last night at around 11pm, right before bed. When I checked on it at 8:30am it was pretty much ready to go - may be that since it was cold last night the heat came on in the house more than usual? Or it was just feeling particularly active? In either case, we have some errands to run today and I am not going to be ready to start making the dough until later this afternoon, so I put the nearly ready poolish in the fridge. Will likely be in there for 6 hours or so.
Am I causing myself more trouble by doing this? Should I just forget making baguettes today and start over tomorrow?
One of the biggest challenges I am finding with making good bread is the timing and sometimes having to work around a fairly busy schedule. I try to work it out so I can make the bread when it needs to be made, but sometimes life intervenes.
I've put poolish in the fridge overnight or longer with no problems. Also, I have a couple of recipes where they say to make a poolish then let it sit at room temperature for 8 to 24 hours, so I don't think that would be a problem either!
Now I rarely ever use a poolish or biga. But when I build my levains, they almost always go into the refrigerator for later use. So, although I cannot speak definitively about poolish and biga, I am pretty darn certain that they would react similarly to levains which are placed in retard.
When I do pull a levain from the refrigerator for use, I almost never let it come back up to ambient temp. Rather, I use warm water in the final mix. The chillier the levain is, the warmer the water. My order of business is water, then levain, then squish and mix the two together. The water cools down, the levain warms up and you can then mix in your final flours, etc. I've been doing this for a "long" time now and have yet to see a degradation from employing this method.
Now, about the scheduling issue. One of my baking mantras is to control the schedule rather than have the schedule control you. Of course in a professional baking environment it works the other way around, but at home we are the bosses. Time and temperature are our friends. I've made my final levain build days before using it. In fact one is in retard right now for use tomorrow or Monday. The same will hold true for retarding a bulk risen dough. Don't get hung up on having something retard for "exactly" 10 or 15 hours, let's say. At any time after a few hours of bulk retard - and to your schedule, pull the vessel from the refrigerator, divide, pre-shape, and shape the dough. Then return it to retard until you are ready to bake.
Folks get all hung up on living to the near-minute schedule that they set out. Not necessary!
One way to find out, and to learn something for the future is to try it and see what the outcome is. A report back on it would enlighten other folks too.
No cardinal Sins concerning poolish that i know of
debbahs,
Having lived in hot humid climates, Baja & Florida, for the past 20 years I have always mixed my preferments early afternoon and let them sit out until bedtime. Then the preferment will go in the fridge over night. Around eight the next morning, or when I'm ready to start, I take the cold preferment out and I immediately mix my dough.
Other than as 'alfonso' states about being in control, which is very nice, I also have the benefit of keeping my mix temp and final dough temp great.
Making bread is like a dance. I have made 'timelines' for my different breads. I go from start to finish in hours and minutes indicating; Pre-mix, Autolyse, SP1 mix, SP2 mix, Bench Folds, Bulk (including Stretch & Folds), Pre-form & Rest/Relax, Proof, and Bake. This give me the total time for that bread.
Depending on my schedule for that day I can 'plug in' the start time for the above run time that will assist in my 'schedule control'. It does not always work, but it is certinally a help.
I always remind myself that this is suppose to be FUN....! But sometimes I get a little wound up.
Enjoy....
either way, that's a beautiful baguette. You should post these more often for all of us to enjoy!
alfanso,
Thanks for the nice words..! I really enjoy playing with this baking in the home environment with all it's challenges.
Not wanting to bore all you folks, but here are a few more:
Fat Batard made with my old Sour Dough culture.
Sour Dough Baguettes (My wife's favorites)
Ciabatta (85% Hydration) Berger Buns still in the oven.
40% Rye Boule. It is dramatically 'Under Proofed'. I like to play with 'times' to see what happens. It still tasted good.
I made the dough and just adjusted the water temp - so far so good. I'm getting the texture I want, and sure enough ended up with the dough temp exactly where it should be. I will keep you all posted with progress, and thank you for sharing your wisdom!
debbahs,
You are very welcome..! Please do not 'over-engineer' or get way too intricate with your regiments. Always remember that it is more about the journey than the 'paint by numbers'.
Hey,,, you always keep notes in a little spiral notebook and notes from each bake don't you?? And you use a scale in grams??? Keep notes each bake until it is redundant.
Just have FUN.... Flour is cheap so no worries. AND sorry for the upside down photo... I guess my computer was upset with me..
See ya, bye
Just needed rotating.
Mmm, pretty loaf.
gary
Gary,
Why didn't I think of that.... I seem to have brain fade from time to time. Thanks for the help!
Debbahs,
I agree with Alfonso on not letting the schedule run your life (unless you're a professional baker). Funny you should post this because last evening the schedule precluded finishing the build. No problem. Covered the levain bowl inside a plastic meat counter sack (thank you Costco) and into the fridge it went. As per Alfonso I use warm water to offset the lower temperature of the levain when the build recommences.. I call this sort of thing "Danse de Levain".
Wild-Yeast