In article >,
Felix Karpfen > wrote:

> On pages 146 -147 of his book, Hamelman painstakingly describes the
> benefits of building the (wheat) preferment in two stages.


Well, perhaps the answer is in the opening line of that section:

"When we have a bowl of mature culture -- either liquid or stiff --
weighing a pound or so, and we need to build it up to several pounds, in
order to mix dough several hours later, how do we do that?"

Later on he says:

"It's asking a lot, however for the microorganisms in our bowl to take
in all that food and water [the much larger amount required for the
future big bake] at one sitting -- after all, we humans could survive if
we ate breakfast, lunch and dinner all at once and nothing else till the
next day, but we probably wouldn't feel too good on that sort of eating
regimen -- and neither would our culture if we bombarded it with such a
hefty meal. Therefore, let's do our building in two stages:"

He then goes on to give an example of building one pound of culture to 8
pounds. That's quite a bit more than what I normally do in my kitchen.
(In fact I often think how my little yeastie boyz live a veritable life
of reilly - most live out their days undisturbed while only a small bit
get sacrificed in the oven. But that's probably enough of that sort of
thing!)

I do enjoy the recipes in Hamelman's book and use them with good
results. I certainly have not tried them all, but each of them made
good bread from the first try and each gets better with practice. The
ciabatta I've been making lately has been from Reinhart's _The Baker's
Apprentice_ and that certainly has turned out well too but I did a lot
of flipping back and forth to see the differences in formula and I also
read what Hamelman had to say on the subject, just for a better
understanding.

--
Mary Beth
Orientation::Quilter
http://www.quiltr.com
http://www.fruitcakesociety.org
http://homepage.mac.com/mbgoodman/bread05/