poolish

Toast

Hi, I am baking some of my yeasted breads with a poolish which I feed with a pinch of instant yeast. could I replace this pinch of yeast with a glob of leftover levain? The final dough would have yeast again.

Thanks for your input.   Barbara

I have been making my everyday yeasted bread with a portion of my rye starter discards.  As I start feeding my rye, getting ready for a bake, I've been placing the discards into a jar and into the frig.  l was using about a 60g poolish for a single loaf of yeasted bread that is 100g ww flour and 200g ap flour.  Once I started playing with the rye starter, I've been using 60g of sarter instead of the poolish.  It works very well and adds another layer of flavor with the rye.

Theresa

 

I have tried replacing commercial yeast with levain (not quite discard but refreshed one as I never have discard) to make poolish a quite few times with my regular recipes for baguette, focaccia, etc. It works alright, but it makes slightly different result. I always find it produces slightly denser crumb than yeast-based one and definitely different flavour/aroma. 

Good question as I'm also experimenting with my starter.  I'm definitely bookmarking the link for a more indepth  understanding of this very complex subject. Thanks for posing the question!!

 

Judy

the other way all the time.  A poolish or biga can take 12 to 24 hours depending on how much yeast you use and a SD levain can take 12 - 24 hours to build depending on how much starter (or left over levain) you use.  If you know how long each takes to be ready to bake a loaf of bread the switch is no worries.  You just won't get any sour out of the commercial yeast.

Happy baking