Greetings!

I'm a newbie, consumed with bread baking . . .

Yesterday, I made Dan Leader's Whole Wheat Sourdough Miche. I got creative after preparing the pre-ferment; I wondered what would happen if I mixed the dough portion of the recipe (combined it with the water, less the remaining yeast) while waiting for the pre-ferment to do it's thing. Everything seemed to combine normally. I got a good first rise, but not much on the second rise after forming the loaf. I did not get a huge oven spring. The taste and texture were very good, not too dense, but not much in the way of an open crumb.

Has anyone got thoughts on the merits/advisability of doing this? Waste of time, or potential flavor enhancer?

BTW- I am in AWE of the amazing breads you all create!

Phxdog.

Hi all,

 I've been baking from Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain cookbook for about a month now. I'm not an experienced bread baker, but I've slowly been increasing the hydration of my dough, learning to shape slack doughs, and improving the crumb of my hearth breads. 

I'm having a bizarre issue with my pre-doughs (the soaker and the biga in Reinhart's terminology); both the soaker and the biga tend to develop a greyinsh-brown film on top. If I leave the soaker out at room temp, this film becomes pronounced and very hard (I lose a good portion of the dough by trying to pick it off).  It's diminished by storage in the fridge, but still noticeable as a darker coloring, only on the top of the dough that is exposed to air.  This seems to happen whether I use water, buttermilk, whey or milk as the liquid in the recipe, and it happens both with yeast (biga) and without (soaker).  It seems to get worse with time (if I leave the pre-doughs in the fridge for 2 or 3 days it is more pronounced than after 24 hr).

Does anyone have experience with this?  It doesn't seem to always happen; I've been using the same batch of flour (25 lb batch of organic, freshly-milled hard red wheat flour from a local farm); I haven't gotten around to buying a different source of flour from the store and checking it out.

Anyone know what this is, or have ideas as to how to prevent it? 

Thanks much,

Kaela

Hi all,

I have a question about the hydration of a pre-ferment. I realize that changing the hydration makes it either a biga or a poolish, but I don't care so much about the name as I do the result! I just made Hamelman's Rustic Bread with a few changes, and the family loved it. I doubled the ww (there's not that much to begin with), and used it in the pre-ferment instead of the final dough. It worked wonderfully, but I'd like to go a little further and up the ww % even further, maybe to 50% eventually.