I'm about to try Reinhart's recipe from BBA for ciabatta. I've made his recipe for poolish. My question is, does anyone know how much poolish results from his recipe? I've tried to measure it and it's a sticky delight. I'm afraid that by basically tearing it apart to measure I'll damage it somehow. His recipe says it's 'enough' for the ciabatta but doesn't say if it's more than enough. Thanks for any help. I'm a real newbie.
Also, the recipe says to take poolish out of frig 1 hour before using to 'take the chill off'. Is 1 hour enough or should it come to room temp?
....then I would expect it would all be used in the making of the dough. I often use a poolish for my doughs and it all goes in - there is no point in keeping any back
Don't worry about it - just go with the flow :-)
Thank you. The reason I asked about how much poolish it makes is because the recipe is in a separate section from the bread recipe.
I used it all. What the heck! the dough was very pillowy.
Thanks. I'm about to take it out.
ehseeker,
I found that as a general rule the Poolish is 30% of the total flour in the recipe. Then mixed with the same amount of water,,,, which is deducted from the total recipe water. This would be considered a 100% preferment, i.e. the flour and water are the same amounts.
Some of my breads I'll increase the Poolish to 40% or even at times 50%. It just depends on how complex the flavor I would like the bake to be.
As to 'cold poolish',,,,, I live in a fairly hot, humid area and I mix all my dough using a 'fridge' cold poolish, cold final flour, and cold final water. I've found that this give me a finished dough temp of 22c (72f) to 24c (76f) and I find that I can get more hydration into the dough while keeping it from becoming a sticky mess.
I'm sure that you are scaling all your ingredients. If not please do your self a large favor and purchase a digital scale and use it on the gram scale.
Good luck and good loaf's…..
No, I haven't been weighing although I do have a digitle scale bought for other reasons. I'll try that next weekend. Thank you.