Preferment, Soaker, Starter ect
I've been baking sourdough for about 2 years now both with white flour and freshly milled grain. I feel like I have a handle on it and really want to start creating my own formulas but there are some things that I just don't seem to understand. So I'm asking for someone to explain to me, in the most simplest of terms, what the hell is a preferment and soaker.
I just assumed that preferment was another word for starter or levian as you're 'pre-fermenting' and adding it to your recipe. Yet when I'm looking at recipe calc's, preferments seem to be separate and I'm left confused.
I also assumed that 'soaker' was the addition of 'soaked' ingredients like nuts or dried fruits, but that doesn't seem right either.
Please help! And thank you in advance!
A preferment is the same as a levain.
A starter is usual a smaller version that you just feed to keep it alive.
you can then when you want to bake use a part of that starter to create you levain/preferment.
The term soaker is new for me.
preferment can be
1) a "levain" which is in effect a built up starter, either a) building up your whole jar of starter, or b) removing anywhere from a tablespoon to a cup of starter, putting it in a bowl, adding flour/water to the bowl, and building it up separately from the jar of starter.
2) a poolish, which can be "innoculated" by some amount of starter from the starter jar, or with commercial yeast. Also with flour and water, usually liquidy. like 100% or more hydration. you let it sit and ferment a while, like 1-b.
3) a biga, which is like a poolish, but closer in hydration to a dough, innoculated by starter or yeast, and then allowed to sit and ferment.
soaker, is autolyse. Softens the flour, so it's especially good for whole wheat. the water also activates the enzymes in the flour in order to break down starch into sugars. This develops flavor, too. Whole wheat has natural enzymes from the bran. North American white flour either has malted barley flour added to get enzymes, or has amylase enzyme added. See the official ingredient list of the flour bag.
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Peter Reinhart's books are excellent explantions of the various pre-ferments and soakers: I have his three main ones. Get all three if you can. Crust and Crumb. Bread Baker's Apprentice. Whole Wheat Breads.
Get Whole Wheat Breads if you want to do mainly 50% and up whole wheat loaves. Get BBA if you do mainly white flour, or 25% or less WW loaves. but even Crust and Crumb is educational to read.
Hamelman's "Bread" is excellent, but he only goes up to 50% whole wheat formulas.
Forkish's "Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast" is excellent, but only goes up to (correction, not 50%) 75% whole wheat. He has at least one poolish and at least one biga recipe.
This is awesome info, thank you!
So when entering info into a bread calc and it lists preferment separate from the starter, I'm assuming it's asking for the starter before feeding? Baker's math seems to allude me as sometimes it appears that the flour and water from the starter are included in the total percentages, and sometimes they are not.
I have Forkish's book. It was the first one I bought when I decided to jump into the world of sourdough. I also have the Tartine book and Heritage Baking. The later seems to use a hefty percentage of whole-grain but I can never seem to reproduce the loaves with success as written. I'm sure it has something to do with the fact that I'm milling the flour and keeping it at 100% extraction and they're probably using a commercially milled flour with much lower extraction.
I will definitely look into the other books you mention. Thank you again!
"I'm sure it has something to do with the fact that I'm milling the flour and keeping it at 100% extraction and they're probably using a commercially milled flour with much lower extraction. "
Yup! That's a thing. I will look up some previous threads to refer you to.
Other home millers to follow here are barryvabeach, MTloaf, DanAyo, SheGar, danni3ll3, ifs201, UpsideDan, dabrownman, and apologies to others I have forgotten (deblacksmith?).
In my experience, Fresh-Milled flour has 7 "things" I need to allow for:
1. fresh milled is thirstier, takes more water, than store-bought WW.
2. fresh milled takes more time to soften, so use 30-90 minutes of autolyse, depending on granularity (particle size).
sidenote: because of 1 and 2. if I make a combo Fresh-milled WW and white flour loaf, I autolyse only the Fresh-milled WW because the white flour would "steal" the water first. So in that case, I add the white flour (and some water) when I combine in the levain. I'm sure there are other ways to do it.
3. Fresh milled is Tricky, in that you think you over-wetted it, but then it absorbs and it feels underhydrated, but then it eventually slackens. So after you learn by trial and error (keep meticulous records of weights) and "dial it in", then you have to trust it to end up at the right spot of hydration. you sort of have to learn three or four different "feels", one at each stage, (depending if you add salt in a separate stage -- salt tightens dough, temporarily.)
4. Fresh milled ferments FAST! I use 3.5% prefermented flour for an overnight bulk ferment, or an overnight proof. Fresh-milled, like most store-bought WW, maybe even more than store-bought WW, keeps on fermenting in the fridge, more so than white flour does in the fridge. The fridge won't "stop" WW from fermenting/aging/breaking down.
5. Fresh milled flour has oil from the bran and germ Store-bought WW has had some oil evaporated off, and might not even have had the germ in it, depends on brand. So I use little to no oil compared to store-bought WW.
6. If I over-hydrate a dough, and feel like I need to add flour to adjust, I add _white flour_ because it will absorb water quicker than fresh milled WW. The late addition of WW and especially fresh milled WW won't get as hydrated/soaked as well as what was in there from the beginning. In other words, to "salvage" an over-wet dough at some point in the bulk ferment, I use white store-bought flour.
7. good oven spring on a boule or batard (ie, not a pan-loaf, like sandwich bread) generally requires under-fermenting. Do not let it rise (first or second rise) as much as you do with a loaf baked in a pan. First rise (usually called bulk ferment) can be 30-50% increase. 2nd rise (usually called final proof) even less, depends on if you do it at room temp or in fridge.
Your mileage may vary.
Bon chance, et bon appétit.
Is it too early in our relationship to say I love you? LOL
I have such a difficult time finding formulas suited for freshly milled and each grain is so damn different that one hard red doesn't perform the same as another hard red. Makes my head spin at times.
I did know that they are a thirsty thing and adjust my water to accommodate that however if I used an autolyses, I did so using both the freshly milled and the store-bought. I will leave out the store-bought and autolyses every time to see what differences that make.
I typically use a larger % of starter/levain because my home is typically on the colder side. Even in summer, my kitchen rarely hits more than 70-75F so if I start something in the evening, I leave it to bulk on the counter overnight night, shape in the morning and then into the fridge to baked when I get home from work.
How do you know that you've over-hydrated a dough? I have done a few that feel "soupy" at first, but after letting them sit for 10 minutes then doing a knead in the bowl thing, they tend to tighten up and feel good.
On oven spring.... it doesn't ever seem to be what a white flour loaf produces. I've been told it's because of the bran and germ acting "like knives" to the gluten strands. I can make an awesome white loaf, but with everything going on, store-bought flours are more difficult for me to source whereas I have a good 100lbs or more of grain to play with. Is there a way to get a beautifully bouncy, perfect loaf using all freshly milled or will it always be a little flat?
I had a good discussion with another new home-miller, titive, over here: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/62044/issues-gluten-development-freshmilled-sourdough
And then there is a subsequent discussion at the end of that thread with another new guy, duramaximos.
These are two different things.
“Soaker” is used to describe ingredients that have been soaked (surprise!) in a liquid to rehydrate them or to soften them. Example: I used a hot soaker of 150g each of bulgur wheat and boiling water in some bread this weekend. That softened the bulgur wheat so that it won’t feel like birdshot in the finished bread. It had absolutely nothing to do with passive development of the gluten in the flour.
Dried fruit is often soaked in fruit juice, water, or booze to rehydrate it prior to incorporating in the dough. Seeds and grains may be soaked in either hot or cold liquids to soften them. The combinations are near-limitless.
Just don’t combine “soaker” with “autolyse” in the same definition.
Paul
Paul, it's one of those "overlap" things, innit? Peter Reinhart used the term "soaker" for combining water and flour and letting it sit. In that instance, it is an autolyse.
But yes, you are also correct: bulgar and seeds and dried fruit soak while not autolysing.
Autolysing is, technically, a self-breakdown: enzymes converting starch to sugar in a wet condition.
There is overlap in most the other terms too.
We are engaged in a hobby wherein the terminology is not completely nailed down. If we were in the four walls of a commercial bakery or culinary institute, the terminology could be better enforced.
I would say a soaker is a means of hydrating a specific ingredient or set of ingredients. For example you might have a recipe with 100g of cracked wheat in it. To ensure this is fully hydrated you might soak it in 100g water (and soakers can use cold, warm or hot water) the night before.
Enzymatic activity is not normally required or desired in a soaker, so often 1% salt will be added to inhibit this.
In contrast, the primary function of an autolyse is to encourage enzymatic activity to start dough development prior to adding the levain or yeast. This usually takes place with all of the flour and at normal dough temperatures. Also the duration of an autolyse is normally much less than a soaker.
Lance