In article >,
wrote:

> On Tue, 17 May 2011 20:09:53 +0000 (UTC),
> (Steve Pope) wrote:

> >I had a friend's homemade bread the other day and he used a
> >poolish (sp?) -- it was very distinctive and quite good.

> What the heck is a poolish????????

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poolish

"There is not currently any credible explanation for the origin of the
term."

"Generally, there are two pre-ferment varieties: sponges, based on
baker's yeast, and the starters of sourdough, based on wild yeasts and
lactic-acid bacteria. (Some bakers, however, use the term to refer only
to the yeast variety.[3]) There are several kinds of pre-ferment
commonly named and used in bread baking. They all fall on a varying
process and time spectrum, from a mature mother dough of many
generations of age to a first-generation sponge based on a fresh batch
of baker's yeast:

* Biga and poolish are terms 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.[4] Bigas can be held longer at their peak than wetter sponges,[5]
while a poolish is one known technique to increase a dough's
extensibility."

Sorry you asked, aren't you?

:-)

--
Dan Abel
Petaluma, California USA