90% biga loaf (Italian method)

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90% biga loaf, as I learned from italian maestro Ezio Marinato.

This means when you mix the dough, 90% of the flour is already prefermented. As a result we have a very digestive bread, also a lot of aroma and character.

Method:

Biga: 900 grams of bread flour + 405 ml water + 3 grams of instant yeast or 90 gr sourdough. Disolve the yeast in water. Add flour. Mix 1 minute at slow speed, just until you get wet flour threads. We don't want to develope gluten in this stage. Let the biga mature 14-16 hours at 14-16 degrees celsius inside the same mixer bowl, covered with kitchen rag.

Final dough: All the biga + 100 grams stoneground flour + 300 ml warm water + 20 gr salt.

Bulk fermentation: around 1 hour.

Divide and preshape. Let rest 30 minutes.

Shape. Final proof, 1 hour.

 

 

 

 

i make my ciabatta with a 50% biga with a litle wholemeal and rye in it and its absolutely delicious - well worth the long ferment - think i might try this though looks wonderful and can already smell it 

of all the commercial-yeasted doughs. This one looks fascinating and has such a time advantage once the biga's fermentation is complete. It's a must try!

How do you find the character to be different when you use commercial yeast vs sourdough. I could guess, but with a 90% pre-ferment...who's to say!

Hi! So I followed the steps to make the big, and let it sit for most of a day. But I had a REALLY hard time incorporating the flour and water on Day 2 into that very stiff biga, and was left with lumps in my dough. 

I saw somewhere that breaking off pieces of the biga and adding them to the flour/water is a good approach. Any other ideas? 

Thx. 

You may find this video helpful on how to mix in a biga.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJ_tbUbLAVI

 

I handmixed on my first try but then I used an electric mixer (Panasonic 2550 Bread Machine  Knead Function,#19 for 20 min) on the doughs afterwards. It transformed the dough . Also start off with  a slow mix then drip in the water for the last amount of water.

Hope this helps. I really love mixing a dough of 90-100% biga now.

Enjoyed watching the video and interesting how he made that pizza, can see why he made the video if the pizza tastes as good as it looks.

i do love sourdough but i think long slow fermentation is the key character component in bread....i make a mix of sourdoughs and commercial yeast breads for a saturday market  - all are slow ferments whether with poolish, biga or sourdough. - all have great flavour, the smell of the preferments alone make you aware that time, temperature and patience are the key ingredients to a delicious bread....i also use a mix of wholegrains in my preferements which gives deeper flavour and a kind of back note to all the bread.....as for a 90% prefermnt - i have to try that - i usually use 50% max.    

Abel,

If it is 900g of flour and 405g water for the IDY version, that works out to a 45% hydration biga.  I don't recall ever seeing a biga or any other bread with so low a hydration, and I can't imagine how it is possible to incorporate the water and have the biga dough saturated.  How does that work?  Is the levain version using a 100% hydration levain?

Overall the IDY version works out to ~70% hydration, which should be just fine.  What is the baking temperature?

thanks, alan

Hydration in biga is 45% to 47% of the flour. So for 900 grams of flour, 45% is 405 ml of water. You don't need to create a dough, it's just mixing one minute until all the flour is wet, like when you make crumble. You just have to create some wet flour threads.

Shouldn't have jumped the gun and guessed. Thank you for the correction.

Gotta try this myself.

Italian flours, like fairly common in the US, Caputo's chef's 00 often do no absorb water all that well.  45% with it may well feel like 60% with a regular flour.

You need to use a strong flour (12.5 to 14 proteine). Think that this flour must be fermenting 14-16 hours at 14-16 degrees C. If you use a week flour, it will be very degradated after this process. You can use a weeker flour not in the biga, but in the rest of the formula.

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Hi friends. There's a lot of misunderstanding with Biga. In most of the books it's not well explained. I also had a lot of confusion until I attended to some courses with maestro Ezio Marinato and many other chefs in italian bakeries.

Hydration in Biga is between 45% and 49%. Depends on how strong your flour is. Biga is not a dough. Biga contains litlle water so it doesn't arrive to be a dough. The texture must be like a crumble. That's why it's important to disolve the yeast in water, and then add flour. If you use mixer, and you work with small quantity, maybe 1 minute at slow speed is enough. If you are working with great quantity of dough (3-4 kilo or so) maybe you mix 2-3 minutes. But it's important not overmixing. Just create some threads of wet flour. That's all.

The main difference between biga and poolish and sponge is this one: when you make poolish, it grows and it's full of bubbles. When you make sponge, it also grows (2 or 3 times in volume). Biga, after 14-16 hours of fermentation, reamins the same volume, it doesn't grow. It only looks like a wetter dough, but the volume is the same. The only difference is the smell and the aroma. It's also important the temperature. Italians are very strict in this item. 14-16 hours at 14-16 degrees C. In most of the itaian bakeries there's a cellar with this temperature (aprox). If you cannot be sure that you will be able to keep this temperature, specially in summer or spring, you can use some salt to control the fermentation during the biga process.

Another thing that makes the Biga so special is the dosis. If we compare with poolish, poolish is 100% hydration so the maximum quantity of poolish we can use in a standard bread is 60% to 70%. Isn't it? The regular standard for sponge is 20% to 40%. The authentic italian Biga bread is made with 90% to 99%. So an alternate version to the bread I made with 99% biga would be this:

Biga: 990 strong flour (bread flour or Farina 1, or T80 wheat stoneground flour) + 445 ml water + 3,3 instant yeast or 99 grams of sourdough.

Final dough: All the biga + 10 grams flour + the rest of water we want + 20 gr salt.

If you want to learn more about biga, I suggest you to follow italian bakers like Ezio Marinato. If you visit Venice, you should take a Uber and meet him in Cinto Caomaggiore, 20 minutes from the city.

 

 

 

I shouldn't have used guess work (as above). Learn something new everyday.

Lovely loaves and will certainly try your method.

Thank you.

Mine is bulking now. Will bake it tomorrow. This was a bit of an impulse bake because I realized I am almost out of bread. 

i can’t make mine exactly like the recipe.

Unfortunately I do not have access to 14-16 degree bulking space, so I must make do with what I have. Fridge temperature or room temperature. I left it at room temperature for 3 hours then it went into the fridge for overnight fermentation. 

I used 58 grams of (hungry)sourdough because that is what I could spare while still leaving enough in the jar to feed for future doughs. 

I think I mixed a bit too much. It went past the crumble-stage in places, and I can see a little gluten development in some patches. Some bits are still crumbly, but hydrated. 

What will be will be. 

 Question: what negative effects can I expect from the premature gluten development. What difference does it make? Why is it important?

I think it's very difficult to get the biga at the right consistency - not enough mixing and you end up with dry crusty lumps and free flour, too much and you start to get a cohesive mass rather than shreds. I believe the purpose of having shreds is to give oxygen from the air good access to the dough piece to encourage an aerobic fermentation.

This looks like a good solution from pizzapurista, where you do a good mix and then manually cut the dough piece into shreds for the biga fermentation. OK, he's making pizza, but the biga is just the same. I haven't tried it yet, but I intend to next time.

Lance

Check this site for biga infomation.

This is where I learned about biga many years ago. I have shared this wheneven someone talks/asks about biga in this forum. :) It has lots of info about Italian bread, quite helpful.

The classical formula for the Biga: 42-46% of water), cool (64-68 F), and made active by a dose of yeast (1%). The rest  time  of the biga is commonly from 16 to 18 hours. It also provide four ways to prepare biga.

Hi friend. Interesting. That's not exactly what I learned from maestro Ezio Marinato, but I understand every chef has its own method. What I learned from him was in several courses I have made with him. It is also explained with lots of details in his book Farina d'Autore.

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What weight are your loaves and at what temperature do you bake them  and for how long? 

Thanks 

Chris

something similar when things go wrong with a shaped proof in the fridge.  If it too far gone i will add 10% more flour and water  and just proof it again.  The crumb is less open but the flavor is always great!.  Nice bake and thanks for the tutorial.

Thanks for the lesson in biga!  This recipe is high on the try it list now that I have a workig starter.  How did you score your lovely boule to achieve the open circles?  Thanks and Happy Holidays.

I have many knives for scoring bread. Depends on what I want to achieve I use one knife or another one. This was made with the orange one.

 

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In reply to by albacore

Thank you, Lance! I forgot about the wayback machine.

There’s a discrepancy here- recipe above has 0.3% yeast and 2nd recipe has 1% yeast - any thoughts on which it should be?

Yeast in Biga is usuallly 1% of the flour (fresh yeast or 0,3% if it's instant yeast). For 900 grams of flour would be 9 grams of fresh yeast or 3 grams of instant yeast. For 990 grams of flour would be 9,9 grams of fresh yeast or 3,3 instant yeast.

The consistency and the appearance of Biga, once is mixed, should be this. Then just leave it in a vertical container, covered with a kitchen towel, leaving a little open, so Biga can breathe all night long.

The old saying "a picture is worth a thousand words" applies here.  This picture is a lesson all its own. 

Fantastic thanks I’ll be making my biga tonight but need to leave for 24 hours so might drop instant yeast to 0.2%

  1. Made the biga Bread over 2 nights - added 10% whole spelt and 5% wholemeal and ate this morning - a wonderful Bread - very aromatic, great chew and good crumb - definitely a keeper thanks for the recipe- I use a biga for my ciabatta but add yeast in final dough - this is first time doing a 90% preferment with a biga and making final dough with water and 10% flour. biga lesson 

sounds great - I must say I love the intensity of the aroma off a biga especially when you add a little wholegrain to it..however it’s the incredible bewitching craft of making totally different breads out of the four same ingredients that gets me everytime

From your description and success. That's what fascinates me too about bread baking. Same ingredients but tweak the method and you get a different bread. This Italian Biga method is new to me so hopefully I'm doing it correctly. Must say it was a tad difficult to not over knead when making it. 

yep really hard to not over knead but I do everything by hand so Makes life easier however the final dough mix is hard by hand because of lumps....something you don’t get if using mixer....what makes this recipe ideal is the cool temperatures - especially handy in a draughty house in an irish winter - 

With an autolyse but then couldn't get rid of the lumps so I too was afraid this would happen again. Don't know if what I did for the biga was too much or not but I'm also doing everything by hand. Time will tell.

The weather for once is in our favour. 

Weather is perfect for biga bread :)  I ended up pinching while kneading - I find dan Lepard method of 3 x 10 second kneads over 30 minutes a great way of doing it. Knead, pinch, allow hydration and repeat- I did it all in bowl starting small stretches  and then longer ones pinching all the time  - got lumps out that way. next time I think I’ll add water in to biga leave to hydrate Then knead as biga needs to soften up - make life easier - you’ll find it ferments quickly- lovely spring off it 

I need a lie down. Dough made. Dissolved the salt in the water, poured that over the biga then added the whole-wheat flour. As I was incorporating it all I thought it was all going south. As the biga came apart I could see the gluten strands. But eventually it came back together again and made a good dough. Did my best to get rid of all the lumps and by hand that's not easy. Now I'm going into the bulk ferment and I'll give the dough a stretch and fold every 15 minutes. 

The lumps are a nightmare but you’re on easy street now - there must be easier way that’s why in retrospect I thought hydrating biga with water for a while would help minimise lumps - I put my dough into steamed microwave for little over an hour with a stretch and fold - then preshape Rest shape and proof just over an hour and then delicious bread....surprised at vigorous fermentation - it’s such a yum bread!

Yes indeed.  I've been paralleling you and Abe on this.  Mine came out of the oven 10 minutes ago.  I'll post a blog entry later today on the trials and travails, and lessons learned!

I’m sure it’ll be a joy as for me it’s a keeper bread - judt need to sort out lumps if doing by hand - by mixer won’t be an issue