What is it?
There are several traditional methods for creating starters for breads. All of these starters are easy to prepare.
A starter usually consists of a simple mixture of wheat flour, water, and a leavening agent (typically yeast or a sourdough culture). After mixing it is allowed to ferment for a period of time, and then is added to bread dough as a substitute for, or in addition to more yeast. So pre-ferments are critical for best tasting bread – You can call it a starter, biga, poolish, preferment, or sponge – they all do sort of the same job and only really differ by water content.
Biga and poolish are terms for pre-ferments used in Italian and French baking, respectively, for sponges made with domestic baker’s yeast. Poolish is a fairly wet sponge (typically made with a one-part-flour-to-one-part-water ratio by weight), while biga is usually drier. Bigas can be held longer at their peak than wetter sponges, while a poolish is one known technique to increase a dough’s extensibility.
Why use it?
The primary difference between making bread with a starter and making bread with the direct or straight yeast method is that starter breads require much more time to prepare, but the flavor and texture of the bread is almost impossible to achieve with other leavening methods. Bread made with starters like poolish and biga also tends to keep better, compared to bread made from straight doughs.
Poolish & biga tips
- If you are working with pre-fermented doughs like poolish or biga make sure not to ‘over ripe’ your pre-ferment. This is especially true when using larger percentages of preferment in your final dough (think up to 50%) because over riping will kill the gluten in your preferment (the yeast will eat them all) and you will end up with a weaker and hard to handle dough.
- The higher the percentage of pre-ferment you use the more your bread crumb will have a nice chewy texture (but it stops at around 50%). We like our bread that way, it gives you something to chew on. The sugars that are released from the flour in the pre-ferment also add a nice golden colour to your bread.
- Yes you can make the same bread recipe using a biga or a poolish, you just need to make sure you adjust the water content.
- You can make a poolish or biga from another type of flour than the one you are using for the actual bread. For example, we use spelt, rye or whole wheat flour to add extra (and different) flavours to our bread.
Percentage of instant dry yeast in poolish
You can prepare your poolish up to 8 hours but also up to 16 hours in advance. But you have to adjust the amount of instant dry yeast you use. Logically, the more time a pre-ferment gets, the less yeast you have to use.
This is the schedule we use
Poolish up to 8 hours in advance – 0.23% – 0.33%
Poolish up to 12 hours in advance – 0.1% – 0.2%
Poolish up to 16 hours in advance – 0.03% – 0.08%
Example – How to calculate the right amount of yeast
You make a poolish consisting of 200 g flour and 200 g water. You make it 12 hours in advance (typically the night before the morning of baking) and it is summer or a nice warm room temperature for the poolish to ferment in.
You calculate the amount of instant yeast needed as follows:
amount-of-instant-yeast = amount-of-flour / 100 x percentage-of-table
For example;
200 g (amount of flour)
0.1% (yeast amount used in summer for 12 hour poolish)
To calculate 1% of 200g of flour you divide 200 g by 100 and multiply by amount in the table;
200 / 100 x 0.1 = 0.2 g instant yeast
(for fresh yeast multiply the amount by 3)
What does 0.1 gram of yeast look like?
To give you an idea of how tiny the amount of 0.1 gram of instant dry yeast is we have made some pictures. The third picture shows 0.1 grams of yeast in a teaspoon, the last picture shows 0.1 grams of yeast in a 1/4 teaspoon.
To give you an idea of how much instant dry yeast goes into a measuring teaspoon:
1 tsp dry yeast = 3.1 g
1/2 tsp dry yeast = 1.6 g
1/4 tsp dry yeast = 0.78 g
Also check out our recipe for pizza dough with a poolish
Find our favorite bread recipe with a sourdough culture based poolish here
Jim says
What is the best temperature of room to ferment your poolish?
Keri says
Room temp is ideal for a pre-ferment (Poolish), same with most breads that are proofing 🙂 I hope that helps!
Joe says
Can a biga overferment? How do I know if my biga is ready to use?
Keri says
As the article mentions, biga is more forgiving than a poolish per-ferment, so it is harder to over-ferment, I would allow it about 16-24 hours. I hope that helps!
Carol McDonald says
Can you just make bread with mixing the flour and water and leave the dough sit for a couple of days to sour and attract wild yeast, then add normal dry yeast?
I don’t want to do the entire sour dough thing
john Ostrowski says
Yes, you can, but every day you need to remove some of the mixes and add equal amounts of water and flour each day for the next 7 days. It will continue to improve. After that, you can refrigerate and add ingredients once a week.
JD says
Hello, I am curious as to what “percentage-of-table” means when calculating the yeast. I am new to this as I plan to start making pizzas in my new pizza oven and that’s the only thing that stumps me. Is there table or graph to look at?
Thank you!
Romy says
They provide an equation just above to figure out quantity.
Ric Whiting says
I use an entirely different kind of measuring for the amount of yeast in my sponges. I take 1/4 cup of water, add 1/8th tsp yeast and stir until dissolved.
I then use ONLY 2 tsps. of the yeasted water in my sponge. Assuming I am making only one loaf of bread.
Poolish example:
34 gram W.W. flour
34 gram of unbleached bread flour
68 gram of water
2 tsp of the YEASTED WATER.
At normal kitchen temps, this is ripe at about 12 hours.
Gary says
Great idea! I like avoiding the need for another scale.
Richard Whiting says
I sure wish the author had told us how to know if the biga is “over-ripe”.
At least tell us how to know when the biga is perfectly ready.
deb says
I saw on a you tube video, that if the poolish has risen and then collapsed down, it’s over ripe. If it’s just starting to collapse, it’s ready. Some one also put a rubber band around the jar that the poolish was in to measure the starting height to the raised height. I think it was going for a doubling of the poolish. I sure hope not as my poolish was probably triple. Check out some videos on youtube. There are so many approaches that I got overloaded. But it may be helpful, in fact I know it will be.
Romy says
I did the same! I over-ripened my poolish. I used it anyway and no one died.😅
Jean Paul Reuland says
Very interesting job done!
My question is: can a long 24 hours Poolish in refrigerator equal effects on digestion like sourdough bread?
Thank you
Samantha says
Don’t be foolish, make a poolish
Chris Kassel says
I prefer a biga, amiga.
Mannie says
I once had a farm in Africa
Emily says
Hello, I was wondering if you know anything about the percentage of “hydration” when making a poolish? I’m wanting to make a focaccia and have heard “hydration” mentioned, like a 85% hydration. How is that measured? Thank you.
Christian van der Leeden says
I think hydration is the amount of water in regards to the total flour weight. 85% would be 85g of water for 100g of flour. AFAIK poolish is mostly water to flour (1:1). Since it is a starter dough you would adjust the water you add in the 2nd step (main dough) so that the total amount of water and the total amount of flour in the dough are then in the relationship that your hydration calls for.
Marilyn Katz says
what to do if you don’t have sourdough starter for your poolish?
Christian van der Leeden says
Well you could go to the supermarket
Mike says
The poolish is started with normal yeast.