Originally Posted by
notsosmart
uk1 I hate to bug you, but is the biga supposed to grow at some point? I just have a jar of watery milky stuff with flour at the bottom. It *smells* yeasty, but it's not growing (after the initial spurt, that is...)
It's no problem at all ..... I'm more than happy to help!
I think your expectations of speed may be a bit too optimistic - so some background.
Pure biga relies on the natural yeasts in the air. The same yeasts that will make cheese become blue cheese or stilton, are the same air-borne natural yeasts that will find the nutrients you put out for it ie a little flour and perhaps some sugar in some lovely friendly warm water. So in real time it would take as much time to make cheese go blue as it would to make your first biga. That's why it's prized and fed daily. And the reason why when you make bread from a biga or poulish it's sourdough is because it's sour because of the same causes of making cheese blue. That's not technical talk it's just my idiot's view of it. But obviously you want your pizza this year ... or this week. Hence my sort of cheats biga.
My suggestion is that you make a few of starters at the same time so the slowest one becomes your pizza in a week or two and the one that you help on a bit will give you a pizza in a few days. If you want something to start your pizza for today or tommorow it's simply going to have to be a bolt standard yeast starter which will be good enough but will never develop the character of your biga.
So I suggest you get three tumblers. For some reason in my experiments short or if you have none tall but narrow tumblers seem better than short squat ones. 7oz to 10oz is fine. Mix a table spoon of flour with a half teaspoon of sugar with some warm/tepid water so it's around a half way up the tumbler. In one glass add a quarter of a teaspoon of yeast. In the second add a teaspoon. And in the third add the full 6gms ie a sachet. Stir them all so they throth a bit.
The full strength one will give you your todays pizza fix but nurture the other two each day. Stir them each day. Ocaisionally give them a little flour to feed on. When the leansest eventually froths, split the mix and retain a half for further feeding and dividing. The other half will be a pizza starter. But even with that starter it may take a day. In Naples people will know where they sell pizza at lunch time using yesterday dough. In the evening it will always be todays dough.
This level of obsession and perfection and it's obvious frustrations takes tremendous patience. But the first time you get your first crispy pizza using a proper biga mix will make it all worthwhile, although I do understand why most proably wouldn't bother.
If this isn't clear or you need any further help just ask.