It’s time to boost our loaves again – this time with the rich world of preferments!
Welcome back to the Use Your Loaf series, where we learn how to improve our bread-baking step by step. This week we dive into the world of preferments and see what difference they make to our basic control loaf.
What are preferments?
They are a bit of dough already made before mixing the final dough. Most are mixed the night before making the main dough, and after 12 – 16 hours they are bubbly and full of life (fermented), ready to boost our loaves.
Why use preferments?
Rather than see it as extending the time spent making bread, you should think of preferments as a shortcut to better bread.
- FLAVOUR – Longer fermentation equals better flavour, thanks to the more time the yeast has to eat the sugars from the bread, producing more flavourful acids and alcohol.
- LONGER LASTING – Breads made with preferments keep better due to their higher acidity.
- STRUCTURE – Due to the extended time spent fermenting, the yeast produces more gas bubbles, bumping against the gluten and creating a strong loaf.
- NO EXTRA INGREDIENTS – The amount used in a preferment comes out of the overall total of ingredients. For example, if we use 500g flour, and the preferment requires 100g flour, then we only need to mix 400g in the final dough.
So preferments are a simple and relatively hands-off way to boost our loaves. Let’s look at our options!
Different types of preferments
There are various different types, including sourdough, but for now let’s look at the four main types of yeasted preferments.
Poolish –
This is a 100% hydration preferment, meaning it has equal parts flour and water. As a poolish is fermented at room temperature, it uses just a tiny bit of yeast to avoid over-fermenting. The end result is quite a loose, batter-like mixture, that is great for adding softness to firmer loaves.
Biga –
Stiffer than a poolish, at around 55% hydration (more on this under), a biga is commonly used in a lot of Italian breads such as ciabatta and focaccia. The lower hydration adds a bit of structure to looser doughs. Again, it ferments at room temperature so only uses a small amount of yeast and no salt.
Sponge –
A sponge is a quickly developed preferment, using all the yeast from a recipe (rather than just a portion), and is often used in enriched doughs. It offers a slight boost in flavour and longer lasting power, rather than a boost to the structure of the dough.
Pâte Fermentée/Old Dough –
This is as it sounds, a piece of old dough, broken off from an already mixed dough and kept overnight to boost the next loaf. Bakers can use this when they are baking every day as a very simple way to improve their daily loaves.
What should we use?
I think using a biga or poolish preferment would make the most sense for our basic loaf. Unfortunately, when I was researching preferments, I couldn’t find a general rule of thumb for what percentage of ingredients goes into each one. In fact, this article suggests you can use them interchangeably! So to attempt to understand what difference each one would make, I’ve tried to gauge an average of what other bakers use (like I did in developing the basic loaf).
| Preferment | Flour | Water | Yeast |
| Poolish | 100% | 100% | 0.8- 0.23% |
| Biga | 100% | 55% | 0.8 – 0.23% |
A good range for the weight of preferment flour is between 20 and 30 % of the total flour. The Baker’s Percentages can be a little confusing, so let’s look at what that actually means for our recipe.
| USING POOLISH | ||
| Control Loaf Recipe | Preferment (20%) | Final Dough (what we mix the next day) |
| 500g Flour | 100g Flour | 400g Flour |
| 335ml Water | 100ml Water | 235ml Water |
| 7g Yeast | 0.1g Yeast | 6.9g Yeast |
| 10g Salt | – | 10g Salt |
| USING BIGA | ||
| Control Loaf Recipe | Preferment (20%) | Final Dough (what we mix the next day) |
| 500g Flour | 100g Flour | 400g Flour |
| 335ml Water | 55ml Water | 280g Water |
| 7g Yeast | 0.1g Yeast | 6.9g Yeast |
| 10g Salt | – | 10g Salt |
Poolish Results
I was really impressed by how well the poolish had increased in volume, especially considering it spent a very cold night in the kitchen. As it is 100% hydration it is very loose and almost batter-like, so I was curious to see how it would affect the mixing.
The dough felt a lot wetter and more sticky than the basic loaf. With that being said, It still came together in the same time, but it just took a bit more effort and mess to get there. It did become a lot easier to handle after the bulk ferment, and shaping was relatively easy. This was really interesting to me as it behaved more like a higher hydration loaf, even though the total amount of water in the dough was the same.
As you can see, there is quite the difference in the shape of the loaf in comparison to the basic bread loaf. The only difference between the two is the addition of the poolish: they were both rested the same amount of time, baked at the same temperature etc. The crumb is a lot better on the poolish loaf, with a bigger variety of bubbles, and a better oven spring.
Biga Results
At 55% hydration the biga was a lot stiffer than the poolish, although it had also increased well overnight. Thankfully this dough was a lot easier to work with due to the firmer preferment, and didn’t feel that much different to handling the basic bread dough. At this stage, I was curious what difference, if any it was going to make to our loaf.
Again, there is a significant difference in the shape and height of the loaves – the biga loaf definitely has a bigger boost from the preferment. The crumb is also more complex than the original loaf, with a variety of bubbles.
Conclusion
So what’s the difference? Well, that’s all a matter of taste. I taste-tested a slice from all three loaves, one after the other, and the results really surprised me. I was unsure if I’d be able to taste a significant difference, but the loaf with the poolish was more chewy than the basic bread, and the loaf with the biga a lot lighter. The biga loaf was so soft and airy despite the stiff biga texture, and the poolish loaf had a lot more bite to it – something I was surprised at given how liquid the preferment was. All three breads were delicious, but the two loaves with preferments definitely had a more complex flavour.
The winner here for me was the poolish loaf, but my husband preferred the biga loaf. Like I said, it’s all a matter of taste, but regardless of which one you pick, it’s fair to say the preferments have definitely made a difference to our basic loaf.
