Mixing some kind of pre-ferment into your dough will absolutely improve the flavor
and texture of fresh baked bread, and it's a procedure that makes all the sense in the
world for professional or otherwise large scale bakeries. But for those of us just baking one or
two loaves at a time at home, you can simply mix up your whole dough in one go as normal,
throw it in the refrigerator to age overnight and you will get basically the same effect.
I've long suspected this might be the case, but now I've done the systematic testing to prove it
to my own satisfaction. I'm going to show you. My base recipe is going to be a pretty wet dough,
something like a ciabatta. A cup of water, 237mL, a teaspoon of dry yeast, a teaspoon of kosher salt
and normally I'd stir in just enough bread flour to get me a dough instead of a paste. But because
we're doing science today, I'll weigh out 265 grams to be consistent. That'll be 90% hydration,
the weight of the water divided by the weight of the flour. Just stir that together,
then let it sit and autolyse for about 15 minutes. Let your water break down your flour and it will
require much less kneading. I'm just going to do a stretch and fold. I do this in the
sink so that I can easily keep my hand wet, which will keep the dough from sticking to me. Stretch
and fold until the gluten tightens up and it stops being stretchable. Just a few stretches.
In the refrigerator to ferment slowly overnight. Now for comparison, I'll mix up my pre-ferment.
Technically sourdough starter is a kind of pre-ferment, but that's a different thing.
That takes weeks to get going and ends up tasting really different. I find that nowadays when people
talk about a pre-ferment, usually they mean something they whip up the night before with
a little bit of commercial yeast. Of those pre-ferments, there's the French model,
which is named after the Polish, which is why it's called poolish — generally a very wet pre-ferment,
like a hundred percent hydration. Then there's the Italian model, which is named after chariots
for some reason. Biga means chariot. Biga is generally a little bit drier, like 60% hydration.
For the sake of these experiments, I'm going for a pre-ferment hydration somewhere in the middle.
And usually you use a tiny amount of yeast for a pre-ferment because they're going to have all
night at room temperature to reproduce. That was like 1/16th of a teaspoon. I'll mix in my flour,
and wouldn't you know it? My mother ciabatta recipe is 90% hydration, which is between a
poolish and a biga. So I can just whip up a miniature version of my final dough and
that'll make the math way easier on me tomorrow. I won't have to account for an excess of water or
flour in my pre-ferment. This is just one quarter of my final dough with less yeast and no salt.
People usually don't put salt in pre-ferment. Salt can affect gluten and fermentation. Small
amount probably wouldn't do very much, but just to be safe, I'm going to add the salt all at once
tomorrow 'cause that's easy to do. So I will. Pre-ferment generally accounts for between a
quarter and a half of your final dough. So for another experiment, I'll whip up half
of my dough as pre-ferment. We'll make a loaf with one quarter pre-ferment and another with
one half pre-ferment. Another thing I've always wondered why so little yeast inside a pre-ferment?
People say that if you put in a whole teaspoon of yeast in the pre-ferment, you'll get too much
fermentation as it sits at room temperature overnight. But too much fermentation is not
a concept that exists in my culture. So I'm going to whip up some pre-ferments with a lot
of yeast. About as much yeast as you would use if you were just baking bread the "normal" way.
We should acknowledge that the normal way isn't normal, historically speaking. People didn't have
little yeast granules or even brewer's yeast until relatively recently. Historically, bread dough was
kind of like fire — it was something that ancient people tried to keep going in perpetuity. Without
matches, it's really hard to make fire from scratch, even if you have a flint. So ancient
societies would've generally avoided the work by keeping some hot coals from last
night's fire to ignite the next night's fire. Similarly, once people got a good wild yeast
culture going, they probably would've used it to mix up the dough for their daily bread and then
they would've held back some of that dough to mix up tomorrow's dough. Thus, this whole pre-ferment
procedure is kind of a modern recreation of how some people have baked bread for centuries.
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Anyway, the pre-ferments have been rising all night at room temperature. The ones
with a tiny amount of yeast and the ones with a ton of yeast ended up about the same volume,
though the one with a lot of yeast smells much stronger. It smells fruity and sour and boozy,
all of which is typical of extra fermentation. The normal pre-ferment with a tiny pinch of yeast just
kind of smells like bread. It's 25% of my final dough volume, so I will give it the remaining
water in my recipe. All of the salt, remember, no salt in the pre-ferment and the remaining
three quarters of the flour from my recipe. No more yeast. All of the yeast we need have
been growing in the pre-ferment all night. One thing I don't like about working with a
pre-ferment is that it's kind of hard to mix in with more flour and water,
but just keep stirring and it will come together. I'll let that autolyse 15 minutes,
take it over to the sink and do a quick stretch and fold, and then I will let it rise. Same with
all my other samples. Let rise about two hours, stretch and fold one more time to redistribute
the yeast and develop the gluten a little more. I'm going to bake these on parchment paper because
they're so sticky. Thanks again to my viewer who told me to crumple up my parchment so that it lays
in whatever shape I want. Dump out the doughs on top and let them proof for about a half an hour,
so they bake up puffy in the oven. I'm sure I can fit two of these at a time inside a single
Dutch oven. The oven just traps steam and gets you a more professional crust, and scoring is
probably pointless for a dough this wet, but I'll do it anyway. I'll bake at 500 Fahrenheit,
260 C for about 40 minutes or until the loaves look almost done. Then I'll take the lid off for
the last 10 minutes or so to let them brown. Here we are. Not the most professional looking
loaves I've ever made, but good enough for a simple flavor experiment. Here's one I mixed
up fresh this morning. No pre-ferment, no aging in the refrigerator overnight. It's just a teaspoon
of dry yeast, salt, water, and flour. Let it rise for two hours at room temperature, fold,
stretch, bake. This baked up kind of flat and it has the softest least crispy crust
of the bunch. The flavor is okay, but it's a little bit bland. That is the "normal" bread.
Here's the bread we've leavened with 25% low yeast pre-ferment. The color is a little lighter,
but that's probably just due to its position in the oven and the pot and such. The crust is
noticeably crispier and the crumb is lighter and the flavor is fuller. A pre-ferment gets you all
of the intense flavors of extra fermentation, but it combines it with the superior structural
properties of a freshly mixed dough. Extra fermentation kind of weakens gluten and that can
affect the texture of the dough. You combine the two together, you get the best of both worlds.
In my opinion, things get even better when we crack open the loaf that was made with 50% low
yeast pre-ferment. This is just more of the good stuff in my opinion. More of those funky
fermented flavors that I basically live for. This one is 25% high yeast pre-ferment. Traditionally,
people use only a tiny pinch of yeast. The pre-ferment here had half a teaspoon of yeast
in it. The crumb is a little denser, which you could say is bad, but I prefer the flavor. This is
the pre-ferment that was so fermented it smelled fruity, and I love those flavors in the bread.
Obviously, I am not a pro baker. Pro bakers are often warning about
the dangers of over-fermentation. They say that it results in a dense and gummy crumb,
which is bad. They also say that it results in kind of a funky sour flavor that is unpleasant,
and that I do not understand at all. I love the funk. We want the funk. Gotta have that funk.
This one is 50% high yeast pre-ferment. The crumb inside is verging on being wet and
gummy. I definitely couldn't push the fermentation any further, but the flavor is awesome in my book.
It's starting to taste like sourdough. Indeed if I take some equal quantities of water and tear off
equal chunks of bread from a couple of my samples, and if I steep them in the water for a while,
the solution of my "normal" bread has a pH of 6.6, which is close to a neutral seven. This is my 50%
high yeast pre-ferment, and the pH is 6.4, which is noticeably more acidic. Extra fermentation
lowers pH and that can inhibit browning a little bit and can make the crumb a little dense and
gummy. But it gets you a lot of really strong flavor. It's all about striking a balance.
What I've learned here is that I can use lots of pre-ferment in my bread and I can use more yeast
than conventional wisdom would dictate in that pre-ferment, and I will get results that I am
happy with. But probably the best loaf of the bunch is the one I just mixed up normally the
night before with a teaspoon of yeast and I let the whole dough sit overnight in the fridge. I
stretched and folded it the next morning, I let it proof a half an hour, and then I baked. Nice dark
and crispy crust, beautiful fluffy crumb inside, and the flavor has pretty much the same fermented
notes and slight acidity that I enjoyed with the best of the loaves I made with pre-ferment. The
refrigerator simply slows down fermentation and it gets you the same combination of attributes
you get from mixing a room temperature pre-ferment with fresh flour and water.
So why do professional bakers use pre-ferments? Are they stupid? No. It makes total sense to
use pre-ferment in a commercial context. In a commercial context, if you're going to mix up all
of your bread doughs for the next day's business and then age them in a refrigerator overnight, you
would need a giant walk-in fridge in order to do that. It's much more efficient to mix up a smaller
quantity of pre-ferment and then just stick it in a room-temperature closet to age overnight. Plus,
you can make lots of different styles of bread from that same single batch of pre-ferment.
In the home kitchen, it's totally different. I'm only making one loaf of bread. I've got room for
it to age in the refrigerator, so I just mix up the dough all in one go with lots of yeast, age it
in the fridge, forget about it for a little while. Whenever I want to bake, pull it out, stretch it,
proof it, bake it, really good. Overnight gets you a great result, though if you go up to a
week in the fridge, it starts to taste like legit sourdough. But that's a topic for another day.