preferment

cabby_john
If I have a good, active starter, why do I need a preferment to start my bread dough, the formula say, - take 50g starter, add 100g flour and 100g water, let this sit for 10-12 hours, then for a dough use 200g of this preferment, why can't I just use 200g of my very active starter to start my dough without a preferment, thanks for the info on this John
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Replies

rossnroller 2011 January 30

You can use your starter, as long as it's fed up and ripe and ready to go.

Most recipes assume that people are keeping a starter that needs to be fed up. eg: If you have a starter 'resting' in the fridge between breads, you would take it out and use 50g of it to make the preferment in the recipe you've referred to. Since yours is already fed up and ready to rock, you can use it as it is.

Make sure the hydration of your starter is the same as the recipe preferment, though.

Cheers
Ross

cabby_john 2011 January 30

[quote=rossnroller]

You can use your starter, as long as it's fed up and ripe and ready to go.

 

Make sure the hydration of your starter is the same as the recipe preferment, though.

Cheers
Ross

Thanks

andrewd 2011 January 30

In Andrew Whitley's Bread Matters he describes the same process but calls it a production starter. All you're doing is making enough active starter for your next batch plus a little left over for future batches.

 

If you already have enough active starter, you've already done the preferment process. So get baking!

 

Andrew

 

 

Muff 2011 January 30

Essentially how it's done in much commercial production. The Acme Bakery in Berkeley does this, at least in some of its shops. We tried it for a while in our shop but ran into consistency problems. It's a good approach.

M

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