i primarily use a sourdough levain for my bread but recently have been using poolish as i want to expand my techniques. I thought id make a roast potato/onion bread in Hamelmans book and he uses a biga/pate fermentee which is only 65% water. Thats fine if you use a machine but can you really get a good mix by hand? Am i best off adjusting the recipe to turn the biga into a poolish? Same amount of flour just make it a 100% water?
advice appreciated
Break it up as much as possible into smaller pieces before incorporating. Or break it up in the water. The kneading should do the rest.
All of the preferment techniques were also premachine. Machines have made things faster for the baker (home or pro) but they all can be done by hand.
I agree with the first response - break it up into small pieces before the hand mixing.
yeah of course....im not thinking....ill go ahead with the biga....thanks
One of my favourite kitchen tools. dip the scissors in water and cut up the biga into little pieces dropping them into the liquids or on top of the autolysed dough. A bit of kneading to mix the bits around works just fine.
cool thanks for the tip mini oven :)
I drop the biga into the dough water by spoonfuls, and then get in there with my hand (or both hands, if it's a lot), squishing it between my fingers until it's well incorporated into the water. Lots of fun!
enough if you are not autolysing. If you autolyse the dough flour and water than the biga needs to be chopped or cut up into small pieces. I like to rub the the small pieces with some of the autolyse between my fingers like making biscuits and getting the butter incorporated to make small sand like pieces. Then working it in is much easier and very old school too. Traditional Artisan Bread can only be made in small batches, by hand without the use of machines and baked in a wood fired masonry oven But making this bread is almost impossible for us home bakers unless you have a WFO ....so by hand is the best we can do - plus you don't have to clean that machine either. Cleaning is work and I like to keep work very far from me and Lucy never does any at all - not ever:-) It is one of the reasons I do slap and folds instead of stretch and folds though. Getting the levain / biga into the mix and mixing in general is so much easier.
its all good...i wasnt using my head...and yes i love using my hands and is part of the reason i started making bread...having said that im going to have to start making more bread which means spiral mixers etc...we shall see....
thanks for the help