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Panaderia Canadiense

Panaderia Canadiense


redundancy

Another thing to consider: if you're working with anything other than 100% wheat, the pre-ferment can do more than just add flavour, it can also drastically improve other characteristics.  For example, I have a poolish that I'm about to turn into about a dozen honey and whole-wheat loaves.  Apart from the space this saves me (pre-fermenting the entirety of that much dough is impossible - my kitchen simply doesn't have the cold space) making the pre-ferment allows me to integrate golden pea flour, which requires extensive pre-hydration but properly handled adds worlds of flavour and texture to the finished bread, into the recipe in such a way that it doesn't bitter or dry out the final product.  Equally, for ale-hydtrated ryes, it allows the flour to interact with the liquids in ways that aren't possible with short exposure.

 

And Edward J mentions corrosion factors: as a commercial baker, you haven't lived until your fridge blows a coil and decompresses all its coolant into your doughs, utterly ruining a day's work.  The cost of replacing the coils is the reason I do ambient-temperature pre-ferments for 99% of my doughs now.  This moves a bit faster than a chilled pre-ferment, but that's less of an issue for me than it might be for other bakers, just based on the styles of bread I produce.

Panaderia Canadiense

Panaderia Canadiense

Another thing to consider: if you're working with anything other than 100% wheat, the pre-ferment can do more than just add flavour, it can also drastically improve flavour.  For example, I have a poolish that I'm about to turn into about a dozen honey and whole-wheat loaves.  Apart from the space this saves me (pre-fermenting the entirety of that much dough is impossible - my kitchen simply doesn't have the cold space) making the pre-ferment allows me to integrate golden pea flour, which requires extensive pre-hydration but properly handled adds worlds of flavour and texture to the finished bread, into the recipe in such a way that it doesn't bitter or dry out the final product.  Equally, for ale-hydtrated ryes, it allows the flour to interact with the liquids in ways that aren't possible with short exposure.

 

And Edward J mentions corrosion factors: as a commercial baker, you haven't lived until your fridge blows a coil and decompresses all its coolant into your doughs, utterly ruining a day's work.  The cost of replacing the coils is the reason I do ambient-temperature pre-ferments for 99% of my doughs now.  This moves a bit faster than a chilled pre-ferment, but that's less of an issue for me than it might be for other bakers, just based on the styles of bread I produce.

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