Originally Posted by
gfunkdave
Update: I have a poolish doing its thing, per your instructions, uk1. It's been about 6 hours and it has a pleasantly yeasty aroma. I'm going to use it in bread tomorrow. Do I need to feed it any? I'm leaning to no, since you haven't mentioned it, but I don't want the yeast to starve/eat all the gluten. Maybe I'll give it a small feeding for overnight.
Great.
You don't do a thing with it. You don't need to touch it, feed it, water it, or even mix it at all once made. It's only job is to contribute to the rise and add some maturity of flavour.
Just add that and a few more grammes of yeast to the main dough batch. The further ahead of when you need the bread and the longer you can wait the better, although not an awful lot of difference. Just be a bit more frugal with the yeast and / or let it do it's first prove in a cooler room. If you want it fairly soon then no problem at all just reverse it a gramme or two more of yeast and a warmer spot.
Flour is so cheap I go through phases where I just get into a ritual of doing a mix of poolish during an evening visit to the kitchen and then mix it the following morning into a dough into the same bowl I used for the poolish in my Kenwood.
If you can take it to a high hydration great. Mix it longer in prep for first rise, which makes it easier to handle, you'll see a more glistening and glutinous surface - then use envelope folds for the final proved shape. If you are making a long bread like a baguette, repeat the envelope folds a few times between 10 to 20 minute rests three or four times or so and don't be scared of trying to stretch the envelope folds in the same direction in the last couple of folds in a way that makes the bubbles more likely to be length way bubbles rather than lateral bubbles. Put the finished shaped bread to rise on a tin and put the whole thing either under a tea towel or in a bin liner. Don't over fold. Rustic is misshapen bread with uneven bubbles. Over mixed and handled will be more cakey. The flavour is in the bubbles oddly ... as much as the dough. Remember the obvious. If you like the crust more than the dough make smaller longer loaves rather than one big one. Just forget all the sense of angst you had with the sourdough and relax. Nothing is likely to go wrong but you'll soon get to learn the principles of the relationships between the five simple ingredients, ie flour, water, yeast, time, and heat and getting a feel for how those five simple elements interact and play is more important then than recipes.
Looking forward to seeing the first loaf.
