The Power of the Poolish

40 CommentsWednesday • June 3, 2009 • by Susan

Name any ingredient you can think of, and chances are you’ve seen it in a bread recipe. Seeds, fruits, vegetables, nuts, herbs, spices, eggs, oil, sugar… all make regular appearances in ingredient lists, and contribute to some wonderfully flavorful loaves.

And yet, at its simplest, truest, most essential core, bread comprises just four ingredients:

Flour. Water. Yeast. Salt.

Bread that sticks to these pedestrian ingredients can be sublime, the quintessential whole that far exceeds the sum of its parts. But don’t be fooled; simple does not mean easy to pull off. Coaxing maximal flavor from nothing more than a few handfuls of ground grain is a bread baker’s most fundamental challenge. If the challenge goes unmet, there are no supporting flavors to step in and pick up the slack.

Enter the preferment. In a preferment, a portion of of the dough’s flour is mixed with water and yeast (and sometimes other ingredients) and allowed to ferment for several hours before it is used in the final dough. This affords extra time for the production of organic acids, a main flavor component in bread. Preferments also make dough stronger and improve the shelf life of the bread.

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