Andrew often recommends King Arthur Bread Flour for the high protein content. I also have used Bob's Red Mill and Organic Bread Flour from Whole Foods. I generally use whatever is available or competitively priced. Even Trader Joe's has bread flour, but they do not reveal who produces it.
Feb 15, 2023·edited Feb 15, 2023Liked by Andrew Janjigian
I find myself seeking out preferment recipes a lot these days. It's a whole thing, but I have metastatic breast cancer spread into my bones and can't stand for longer than about 15 minutes. Recipes I can do in pieces have been really important in keeping me cooking the way I want to. I just made a preferment for your Pizza al Taglio yesterday
Amanda, I am so sorry about your cancer. I hope it is treatable and that you make a full and speedy recovery. And I'm glad to know you've found preferments helpful in reducing the work involved in baking.
Thank you. Not curable, but my current treatment (Kisqali - they run commercials for it all the time, for some reason) gives me a pretty high quality of life and it's still my first line. Savory baking is my main hobby, plus I need to feed my family, so I find ways to make it work
I am so happy you can enjoy baking with simpler approaches to help reduce fatigue. I also hope because you are cooking you are also eating well and finding enjoyment in the process. Take care of yourself and we will be thinking of you.
Theresa - a topic for another day. I don't consider the texture of the resulting breads to be identical, so its apples & oranges, but yes, the effects are similar.
I recently started using a Poolish for my breads which are made with home ground whole grain which I use right away after grinding the flour. The Poolish turns out to be particularly helpful in this application, giving this relatively heavy dough a nice lift. I use white all purpose flour for the Poolish and then work it into the liquid phase of the whole wheat dough like you suggest. It makes a noticeable difference in the lightness and airiness of the dough. I agree with you that using the Poolish before it collapses is important, more so in whole wheat applications. Which is a subject I hope you might tackle one of these days.
I need to dig into a couple of books (like Hamelman), but somewhere along the line years ago I'd read that a stiffer/lower hydration preferment supposedly helps with structure (bagels, panettone). Given that the latter is traditionally made with lievito/pasta madre, which can be so stiff that it's formed into coils, I wonder if that's the case?
The descriptions of pre-ferments was really clarifying - thank you! I realize I've been leaving my poolish out too long and not paying enough attention to it's behavior. I've been working on making rustic bread off and on for several years am having another go now at that lifelong goal of making an excellent country loaf like what I buy at Tartine every time I'm near their bakery.
Allen - interesting, thank you! That tracks with my experience too. I'm currently working on a poolish pretzel recipe which is 60% poolish, overall, and it works great. Also the extensibility is excellent, which is the point of the poolish.
I indulgently thought my little project would get more attention. But even Craig Ponsford, who sponsored the project and was my advisor, scoffed at the results (sort of a "lab results vs. real world experience" sort of vibe). He didn't say much. But he made vague comments that if one prefermented 60% of the flour it would negatively affect the dough's strength (even though my far less experienced hands couldn't perceive a problem).
I think that there is a lot of resistance to doing things a different way when people are used to doing it another, especially when the received wisdom has been passed down for ages from one baker to another. This is something I plan to explore here and in my book. The query I made about diastatic malt in pretzels to the BBGA list went mostly unanswered, I'm guessing for a similar reason.
what do you mean by “high protein all purpose?” flour?
I assume that's King Arthur vs Gold Medal/Pillsbury/store brands
oh like a higher protein ap, that makes sense ty!
Andrew often recommends King Arthur Bread Flour for the high protein content. I also have used Bob's Red Mill and Organic Bread Flour from Whole Foods. I generally use whatever is available or competitively priced. Even Trader Joe's has bread flour, but they do not reveal who produces it.
I find myself seeking out preferment recipes a lot these days. It's a whole thing, but I have metastatic breast cancer spread into my bones and can't stand for longer than about 15 minutes. Recipes I can do in pieces have been really important in keeping me cooking the way I want to. I just made a preferment for your Pizza al Taglio yesterday
Amanda, I am so sorry about your cancer. I hope it is treatable and that you make a full and speedy recovery. And I'm glad to know you've found preferments helpful in reducing the work involved in baking.
Thank you. Not curable, but my current treatment (Kisqali - they run commercials for it all the time, for some reason) gives me a pretty high quality of life and it's still my first line. Savory baking is my main hobby, plus I need to feed my family, so I find ways to make it work
I am so happy you can enjoy baking with simpler approaches to help reduce fatigue. I also hope because you are cooking you are also eating well and finding enjoyment in the process. Take care of yourself and we will be thinking of you.
I’m curious now how or why you’d choose a yeasted preferment vs going with a naturally leavened approach. It would seem to give you similar benefits?
Theresa - a topic for another day. I don't consider the texture of the resulting breads to be identical, so its apples & oranges, but yes, the effects are similar.
Enjoyable read!
I recently started using a Poolish for my breads which are made with home ground whole grain which I use right away after grinding the flour. The Poolish turns out to be particularly helpful in this application, giving this relatively heavy dough a nice lift. I use white all purpose flour for the Poolish and then work it into the liquid phase of the whole wheat dough like you suggest. It makes a noticeable difference in the lightness and airiness of the dough. I agree with you that using the Poolish before it collapses is important, more so in whole wheat applications. Which is a subject I hope you might tackle one of these days.
I need to dig into a couple of books (like Hamelman), but somewhere along the line years ago I'd read that a stiffer/lower hydration preferment supposedly helps with structure (bagels, panettone). Given that the latter is traditionally made with lievito/pasta madre, which can be so stiff that it's formed into coils, I wonder if that's the case?
The descriptions of pre-ferments was really clarifying - thank you! I realize I've been leaving my poolish out too long and not paying enough attention to it's behavior. I've been working on making rustic bread off and on for several years am having another go now at that lifelong goal of making an excellent country loaf like what I buy at Tartine every time I'm near their bakery.
Very glad you found this helpful, Susanna! Much more to come along those lines.
Here's a table I made (doesn't reproduce well in comments:
EFFECTS OF TIME ON DOUGH
Effect Effect on Dough Strength
Proteins link up in the presence of water to form gluten up
Commercial yeast creates carbon dioxide (expanding gas pockets “knead” dough) up
Commercial yeast creates alcohol
Commercial yeast creates flavor precursors
Commercial yeast creates acid up
Wild yeast creates carbon dioxide (expanding gas pockets “knead” dough) up
Wild yeast creates alcohol
Wild yeast creates flavor precursors
Wild yeast creates acid up
Wild bacteria create acid up
Wild bacteria create flavor components
Proteins absorb water (some water released when subjected to heat)
Starch absorbs water (minor effect until subjected to heat)
Enzymes create sugars from broken starches
Enzymes break down proteins down
Back in 2007 I did an experiment testing different amounts of preferment for the BBGA convention.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1zjKmlOJhoT55gBwDqldMRkHN2kQqa0li?usp=sharing
Allen - interesting, thank you! That tracks with my experience too. I'm currently working on a poolish pretzel recipe which is 60% poolish, overall, and it works great. Also the extensibility is excellent, which is the point of the poolish.
I indulgently thought my little project would get more attention. But even Craig Ponsford, who sponsored the project and was my advisor, scoffed at the results (sort of a "lab results vs. real world experience" sort of vibe). He didn't say much. But he made vague comments that if one prefermented 60% of the flour it would negatively affect the dough's strength (even though my far less experienced hands couldn't perceive a problem).
I think that there is a lot of resistance to doing things a different way when people are used to doing it another, especially when the received wisdom has been passed down for ages from one baker to another. This is something I plan to explore here and in my book. The query I made about diastatic malt in pretzels to the BBGA list went mostly unanswered, I'm guessing for a similar reason.
And you saw the somewhat derisive responses to my recent BBGA posts about cold start baking and exploring the true causes of oven spring... :-)