Thank you Roy for your thoughtful answer.
Your answer was a little above my expertise, but I'm sure others will
benefit from it as well.
My best,
Dee

"Roy Basan" > wrote in message
om...
> "Dee Randall" > wrote in message
>...
> > Does anyone make the breads in Carol Field's book that are made with
bigas
> > or poolish that include such a minimal amount of yeast for the biga,
with
> > absolutely no extra yeast added when making the dough with the biga. I
> > have had failures on everyone of these recipes. Can anyone help?
> >
> > Dee
> I am not familiar with Carols book.
> But your question is related to bakery expereince .
> Old time bakers usually use very little yeast when making
> preferments.And if you use that fermented sponge or biga, you will
> need to subject the mixed dough( the biga already in it) to bulk
> fermentation for a one to a few hours before you cut it down for
> rounding and molding operation.
> That is if the biga or poolish use a flour which is just a quarter or
> a third of the total flour used.
> If you apply this system like a normal dough where you just give it a
> short rest after mixing then divide and mold ,the proofing will be
> long and the dough appears squat lookin,close grained and with less
> volume.
> Another efficient way to use it is make the biga from 60-70% of the
> flour and ferment that well.
> Then when the ferment is ripe( it recedes from the fermentation
> container) add the remaining flour with the rest of the ingredients
> and make a dough.
> Give it a floor time of 15-30 minutes then divide it into pieces,
> round the dough let it rest for 15 minutes then mold.
> Proof properly and bake.
> Making biga and poolish with little yeast in it demands that it
> should be fermented well.
> The yeast level will be in the range of 0.25-0.5% fresh yeast basis.
> Some of these new instant yeast do not have fermentation tolerance as
> fresh yeast.
> Therefore if you apply long fermentation of your biga with little
> yeast use the standard compressed yeast as that was designed for such
> fermentation process.
> Using a rapid rise yeast and many instant yeast will usually result
> in poor performance as instant yeast was designed for the modern fast
> breadmaking process.It does not have much tolerance to long
> fermentation.
> Roy