That’s the obvious question, isn’t it? And indeed one that several of you have asked. Most breads, after all, call for only one kind of sponge or starter. So what gives adding two of them? The answer is that different types of microbes do better in different environments. Some prefer it very wet (poolish) some […]
READ ONWell, it’s not really a bait and switch, but truth be told, I don’t use old dough and poolish preferments in my baguettes. I use old dough and sourdough starter. However I wanted to put up old dough and poolish instructions because I didn’t want to punish any aspiring baguette makers by forcing them to […]
READ ONA very good question was “tweeted” in to me late last week by, well…I don’t know his (or her) name. But it was a darned good question. It went like this: You are deep into the historical aspect of baking. In the time before artificial refrigeration, how were preferments managed? I knew I’d like this […]
READ ONThis makes enough for my baguette recipe, but of course it can be increased if need be for some other application. The amount of yeast employed in a poolish is tiny relative to the flour and water. So tiny, in fact, that for a poolish sponge this small, we’ll need to dissolve some instant yeast […]
READ ON…on what you can do with all those Girl Scout Cookies you bought.
READ ONPâte fermenté isn’t the be-all and end-all of sponges, you know. The poolish occupies its own special place in the preferment firmament, right next to the Italian biga (but we’ll talk more about that some other time). You’ll recall in my opening remarks about baguettes that, in addition to various technologies like the deck oven, […]
READ ONAs popular as the baguette has become, it’s no surprise that there are lots of bogus stories about its origin. My favorite attributes its invention to Napoleon’s invasion of Russia. Forget that the invasion took place some 40 years before anyone had ever heard of a baguette (facts only muddy things up). The story picks […]
READ ONIt’s really just bread dough, only you don’t bake it. Of course, if you make bread regularly enough you can just make a little extra dough and hold it in reserve for the next batch. Pâte fermentée will keep for 3 days in the fridge and about 3 months in the freezer. A basic formula […]
READ ONPâte fermentée is what we in the English-speaking world call “old dough”, even though it means something closer to “fermented” or “ripened” dough in French. Classically, the old dough technique is very simple. Every time a baker makes a batch of baguettes (or some other bread that might be improved by old dough) he or […]
READ ONSo then, we’ve established that the baguette was the premier urban fast food of its day, made fast, sold fast and eaten fast (for indeed I forgot to mention that the great marketing advantage of the baguette — because it is so thin, light and fluffy — is that it stales within hours, requiring fresh […]
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