Pre-Ferments

tonight, i prepared reinhart's pate fermentee, poolish, and biga from BBA. the pate fermentee and biga are doughs you mix up, knead, let rise, punch down, then stick in the 'fridge overnight or up to 3 days. the poolish is somewhere between a dough like the others and the kind of wet sponges i used to prepare as a pizza chef back in the day--it's like a very thick pancake batter that is simply water, flour, and yeast stirred together and left out to ferment and get puffy and foamy for a few hours, then parked in the 'fridge overnight or up to 3 days. the difference between the pate fermentee and the biga is that the pate fermentee (reinhart's version, at least) is half bread flour and half all-purpose flour, and has salt. the biga is all bread flour and has no salt. the lack of salt means less yeast as well, because salt inhibits yeast action. the purpose of all these methods is that they allow time to be your ally, drawing out as much flavor as possible from the wheat. they allow those simplest of breads that don't use much in the way of eggs or fats or flavorings or even much sugar--your baguettes and italian loaves and ciabattas and so forth--to let the complex properties and natural sugars of the wheat take the main stage. i've used the biga before and made terrific italian bread with it. i haven't decided yet how i'll used these. i made ciabatta once without any of these and it was good, but BBA has ciabatta recipes for either a poolish or a biga, so i may try both of those and see which i like best.