A Big(a) Controversy

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A few years ago, I made Abel's excellent 90% biga loaf recipe, and it turned out really well. There's some pictures of my bake in that long thread.

I've made the same or similar biga based loaves since and they've never been as good - in terms of crust, ears, loft and crumb. What I've come to realise is that in my original loaf I made the biga the wrong way After that I read some more about bigas and started making the biga the right way

I define the wrong way as mixing the biga to a single cohesive lump (but without gluten development) and storing it as such. This can be done, even at 45% hydration, at least in a spiral mixer.

I  define the right way as mixing for a shorter time, just to get those barely hydrated shreds, often with some dry flour left.

After mixing I stored the biga for 24 hours at 11-12C prior to use, so somewhat colder than a normal biga, which would be 16-18C.

In conclusion I think that mixing the biga "incorrectly" actually gives me better results than the proper method and I will continue to make it this way. Here's a picture of todays loaf:

 

Lance

As the other posters have pointed out, I have tried and had very satisfying results with a biga made with sourdough starter rather than commercial yeast. 

I had excellent results with it, with excellent taste, oven lift, crumb, and crust.

The biga I use is low hydration (50% or less) and simply mixes the water and sourdough starter solution (10g 100% hydration liquid sourdough starter for every 100g of biga flour) with the biga flour. I employ a minimum of mechanical agitation (I used chopsticks) to make a biga the consistency of the crumbs for a crumble. I then leave that to ferment for 24h at room temperature before mixing with the remaining loaf ingredients for the bulk fermentation.  I have made some blog posts about some of the bakes where I provide more detail.

I never had a problem with the mixing of the crumbs/strands of biga into the final loaf dough as they have a minimum amount of gluten at that stage. I simply put the remaining flour for the loaf in a bowl, make a 'crater' in the middle into which I pour the remaining water and any other liquids plus the fermented biga strands, and start mixing from the center outwards with a dough whisk, with the strands dissolving into the liquids quite effectively. I am not too bothered about some clumps here and there as they get smoothed out with the stretch and folds etc further down the line. 

I found that this 'shaggy biga' works very well with white spelt. I have developed a super 50% white spelt loaf with added soaked flaxseeds that uses this preferment and it always works amazingly. It is the only way I have been able to make such a high spelt content freeform loaf. It is not so much use for a 30% wholemeal rye loaf. OK-ish for wholemeal wheat but not so much in it. I am about to try it out with durum wheat flour with which I think it might also work well.

If you have a look at my blog posts you will see and read more about my experiments with 'shaggy' sourdough biga.   

Thanks, ReneR, for your thoughts & pointing me to your posts. You definitely have baked some stellar loaves. I'll definitely try your biga method when I reunite with my sourdough starter in a few weeks.

Rob

PS: if you ever want to try a great, totally different take on a high-%age spelt freeform loaf, check out George Q's 100% spelt 3-stage recipe. It's amazing.

As I wrote, I was going to try out the 50% SD 'shaggy' biga with some durum wheat flour. Here are the results using 100% durum wheat flour, 50% used in the biga and 50% in the bulk fermentation.

100% durum wheat flour

It came out really nice. Lovely crumb, thin but crackling-crunchy crust, good oven rise, and nice flavor. I can taste the 'butteriness' of the durum wheat which I couldn't in previous bakes using my SD liquid pre-ferment.

In past bakes with the same flour and using a SD liquid levaine I have had to keep hydration to around 65% as I have found that durum wheat can go very quickly from a quite tough and strong gluten structure to quite loose during the BF, so tend to be conservative with the hydration, anticipating a loosening of the gluten as the fermentation progresses. But this kept the strength throughout the process so am tempted to go up to 70% in the next bake with this flour using this technique. 

Lovely bread Rene. It's got it all, colour, texture and buttery flavour.

Is it a 'rimacinata' durum flour that you used? And was it a small loaf?

-Jon

Thanks Jon. Yes, it was rimacinata and it was a small loaf. 400g flour. 

The colour was more yellow than it appears in the photo. Very satisfying. I'll go for 70% hydration with the next loaf.

So here is how the 70% hydration 100% semola rimacinata (durum wheat flour) 50% shaggy biga loaf turned out.

70% hydration durum

This is one of the best loaves I have baked. Amazing flavor with the right balance between a slight sour tang and the butteriness of the durum flour, perfect crumb, with the perfect cheewiness, a great oven spring, and a just right crust in terms of crispiness and thickness. It was absolutely amazing to eat with the grilled aubergines on the right of the picture with some ricotta. 

The biga was made with 200g semola rimacinata, 15g of liquid SD starter from the fridge, 83g water and all fermented for 24h. I have reduced the SD inoculation slightly to make it a 24h biga. I drizzled some olive oil over the BF dough between 4 stretch and folds, and added 1g of barley diastatic malt at the BF stage and 4g of salt.

Dough handling and forming was good, if a little less 'autopilot' than the 65% version of the loaf made previously. Durum dough seems to change consistency quite drastically with a small increase in hydration.

This was some seriously good bread.

   

 

... and as you know, I just baked a couple of things.

I think you're onto something, cutting the amount of sourdough in a 24-hour biga. I was thinking about that today.

The eating sounds excellent. Brilliant. Congrats.

Rob

that video made me hungry!

for my last IDY biga bread, I got hold of some rye flour & made a 50% bread flour (all in the biga)/30% ww/20% rye boule.

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 Interestingly, this time the process brought forth the sweetness in the grain. Very nice eating.

But I'm missing a little sourness, so once I'm reunited with my starter (and it recovers from weeks in the fridge) I'll try my hand at a sourdough biga.

Thanks for all the help & inspiration.

Rob

You are getting good at this Rob! Looks very nice. The picture sort of conveys the flavor you describe. Is the rye white rye or dark/wholemeal?

Leaving the countryside for the city?  End of a holiday break? Hope the reunion with the SD starter will compensate for any accompanying blues.

Will be curious to see if you can get a good SD biga bake once the starter is up and running again.

and let us know how the SD biga turns out!

This loaf looks very good as usual, and nice to read that the sweetness of the grain came through. What prompted you to apportion the white flour to the biga, and the rye/WW to the final dough, rather than the other way round? Would the flavour and handling of the dough differ quite a bit if swapped?

-Lin

Thanks, guys.

I started doing the biga with just white flour bc the first dough I made this way (90% biga, white & whole grain mixed 50/50) was unruly. I mix my doughs by hand and had an instinct that the knots of yeasty biga would be easier to soak and incorporate into the final dough if made with only lighter flour. Also, rye can ferment quite rapidly, so I didn't think it would necessarily benefit from the 24-hour biga treatment.

As for the country v. the city: I've been in rural Pennsylvania for a few weeks in an effort to jump-start a long-delayed book manuscript. To be honest, baking was mostly a procrastination device -- though it did make for good sandwiches and I learned alot from posting here on the fresh loaf.

More soon, I hope.

Rob

I can agree about the difficulty of trying to incorporate biga made with whole wheat!

I had to press out all the tiny hard bits of wh wheat biga-the hydration is only 50-65 %. It was a workout but well worth it. 

My dough for tomorrow is to use a white biga (included a rice roux) with a ready mixed 100% whole wheat lean dough that is retarding in the refrig separately from the white biga.  I hope to mix them  (50:50 :: white :"whole wheat") and still get an  airy bubbly  pizza / focaccia . We'll see after the bulk and final rise!

 

PS bread book?!

 

About the mixing of the biga into the final dough and the lumps, in the video Roberto Susta says in passing in Italian (not sure it is in the translation) that he is adding the extra water to it "a little at a time", as he kneads it with his hands.

Agree with Rob. I am not sure that the SD biga method is as effective with wholegrain flours. Tried it with both wholmeal rye and wholemeal wheat, and it was not as striking in its effect as with white flours. Maybe, as Rob suggests, the wholegrain flours are a little too lively to start off with and the difference is not so noticeable. Might try again with a slightly lower SD starter inoculation or shorter biga fermentation to see if there is a difference.  

here's a 50% bread flour (100% of the biga)/30% ww/20% whole rye with walnuts.

I used 10% starter to biga dough weight but brain froze & forgot that starter has water, so I slightly overhydrated the biga (50% hydration instead of 45) and some gluten started to form. Also, I didn't shape it tight enough. 

But, damn it tastes good.

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Rob

You clearly missed your sourdough starter, Rob!

Ah, yes! I also realized I had to take the starter hydration into account! I can see what you mean about making the final dough tighter, but it does look tasty and it is high if whole wheat and rye.

Great result. You'll fine tune the process as you try stuff out and it will only get better.