Article Explaining Preferments

[BakerAunt]

I found this article from Bon Appetit, with its description of the kinds of preferments used in bread baking, useful:

https://www.bonappetit.com/story/what-is-a-preferment

I'm sure there are more extensive discussions out there, but it is helpful to have this shorter explanation.

Spread the word

      

  

  

[Mike Nolan]

Pate Fermentee sort of falls in between the cracks here. Sometimes called 'old dough', it varies from other preferments in that it often has most of the ingredients in the final dough, most notably some salt.

Salt is the friendly enemy of yeast, use enough of it and it will pretty much kill off the yeast. Salt is hygroscopic so it sucks up water that the yeast can't use to grow. (So does sugar.) But slowing down the yeast a bit can be a good thing if it allow more time for enzyme action, which breaks the complex starch in the wheat down into simpler sugars, generally maltose.

Peter Reinhart and others have written about the trade-off decisions bakers, especially commercial bakers who have a production schedule to meet, have to make, preferments trade a bit more time for more flavor. (A full-fledged sourdough starter is the ultimate preferment.)

Chad Robertson's Tartine Bakery books talk about acid balance in a sourdough, referring to the balance of lactic acid producing bacteria (LAB) and acetic acid producing bacteria (AAB). The AAB prefer colder temperatures, so if you refrigerate your starter, as most home bakers do in between baking sessions that may be a week or more apart, your sourdough is going to have more AAB and less LAB. (I have a tendency to get this backwards, but the LAB prefer higher temperatures.) Acetic acid produces a harsher more assertive sour flavor in bread.

One way around this is to prepare a young or immature starter by using only a very small amount of the mother starter culture (Robertson uses 5%) when making the levain for a batch of bread that is kept at room temperature. This way the LAB have their preferred growing conditions.

[Italiancook]

I appreciated reading the article, BakerAunt. I wonder: In KABC recipe for Tuscan Coffee Cake, they use what they call a "starter." Is that a preferment?

https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/tuscan-coffeecake-recipe

[Mike Nolan]

Yes, that's a pre-ferment, my guess is it would be closer to a biga than a poolish, because it is pretty close to 100% hydration.

But as the articles more or less points out, in Italy any preferment is called a biga, just like in France all sourdough cultures are called levains.

[skeptic7]

The Tuscan Coffee Cake recipe looked so interesting that I am making it now. I did the overnight starter only I used 1/2 tsp of yeast instead of 1/16 tsp. Is there a reason for such a small amount of yeast for the starter? I also left out the extra 2 tsp of yeast that the recipe asked for in the dough. I am making several other minor changes like 2/3 cup milk instead of water.

[BakerAunt]

Skeptic--I think that the small amount of yeast in the overnight starter is because you do not want it to develop too fast, as part of the idea is longer development for more flavor.

I'm not so sure that it was a good idea to leave out the additional yeast in the dough, particularly the first time you bake it. With the extra in your starter, you probably could have cut it to 1 1/2 tsp. and been ok. The milk in place of water should be fine.

[Mike Nolan]

I've read that at room temperature yeast doubles in about an hour, so in a 12 hour overnight preferment the yeast would increase by as much as 4096 times. That's why you only need a tiny amount of yeast.

If you have too much yeast, it can run out of sugars to digest. (This gets complicated, it has to do with the amount of starch damage in your flour as well as the amount of alpha-amylase activity, which converts some of the complex starch molecules into simpler sugars, mainly maltose. However, yeast prefers other sugars like sucrose, glucose or fructose.)

If you're doing it in the refrigerator, the yeast will take a lot longer to double, perhaps 4-6 hours.

[skeptic7]

I baked my Tuscan coffee cake. It is rather uneven, I patted the dough into the pan as best I could but it was too soft to form into a smooth ball. The sugar glaze is very interesting and flakey. I am letting it completely cool before cutting.

[Italiancook]

Skeptic7, I'm really interested in how it tastes and what it's good for. KABC says it not sweet, so I'm wondering if it's good eating alone or if it needs jelly. Or, is it a toasting bread?

[skeptic7]

The Tuscan Coffee Cake is excellent! There is a sugar glaze and its full of dried fruit so its sweet without being over powering. Its great eating alone or with butter. I think Jelly might be gilding the lily becaused of all the dried fruit. I liked a little butter spread on it. It sliced very nicely and the fruit was well distributed instead of migrating to the bottom as might have happened with a weaker dough.
I left the butter out of the dough to start with, and then used it on the kneading board as I kneaded the dough. This prevented the dough from sticking without needing to add more flour. The recipe warned that the slack dough would be hard to handled but I didn't have any trouble. I did use disposable plastic gloves just in case.
I don't think this dough would work well as written with all whole wheat flour because of the dried fruits and nuts. I'd like to try it with all whole wheat and just 1 cup apricots and make it into a braid like a round challah, or like a chopped challah. The sugar glaze turned out well but a little messy. I had a pan underneath to catch the spills. The glaze is more elegant than putting on an icing after baking.

[BakerAunt]

Thanks for the report, Skeptic. I had printed off this recipe, perhaps a couple of months ago, but then I forgot about it. I'll have to give it a try, now that Italian Cook has reminded me of it and you have blazed the trail to the oven.

[aaronatthedoublef]

This is really interesting.

I know how to treat my starter to generate the smell/taste I like.

For example - feeding it twice a day gives it a nice sweet, boozey smell. That matters more than how much I feed it.

Also we were just away for the weekend and it came out of the refrigerator and has shown a lot of growth after its first feeding.

But the length of my rise also affects the flavor. Keeping something if the refrigerator for more or less time greatly affects the flavor of the final product.

My main sourdough bread is lean with no added sugar. I usually give the sponge about 12 hours and then 24 for the dough in the refrigerator with several stretches/kneads over several hours at room temp followed by a final couple hour rise after it's been shaped in the oven with the oven light on.

I might try to let it rise longer in the refrigerator (it doesn't really rise much there) and also try a shorter rise on the counter. What I like about rises in the refrigerator and in the oven is that the temp is more controlled than on the counter which can be as high as 77 in the summer and as low as 64 in the winter.

[Italiancook]

I still haven't made the Tuscan Coffee Cake. I need to make the preferment around 8 P.M., but can't start the bread until 10 or 10:30 A.M. I'm thinking (fretting) that 14 hours is too long for the preferment. Does anyone have any insight on this?

[Mike Nolan]

Most of the time I only do about a 2-3 hour preferment, one recipe only calls for a one hour preferment, but if I do an overnight one it often goes 15 hours, and that doesn't seem to be a problem.

[BakerAunt]

It can depend on the temperature in the house. When it is cooler, I find that it takes longer.

[Author]

Posts