Using biga

[Kermit]

Just had my first attempt at making a biga. Yesterday I mixed 100 grams of water with about 3-4 grams of cake yeast, a bit of sugar and flour to get the right structure. Put it in the fridge and planning on using it tomorrow. I don't know if the question can be answered easily, but when I make my dough tomorrow, how much biga should I put in it? The regular pizzadough recipe looks something like this:

Typo 00 flour - 500 grams(100%)
Water - 290 grams(58%)
Salt - 10 grams(2%)
Cake yeast - 2,5 grams(0,5%)

4 hours bulk fermentation and 24 hour balled fermentation - both at room temperature.

[dmcavanagh]

Are you following a recipe? If so , do as the recipes advises.Many times the biga or poolish will contain all of the recipes water content, just need to add additional flour, yeast and salt to bring your dough to it's finish consistency.

[dmcavanagh]

I should add that biga's or polishes are usually very wet, batter-like consistency. A common recipe might be all the recipes water and half of it's flour for the biga, then the other half of the flour would be added when preparing the finished dough.

[dmcavanagh]

Also, biga's typically do not get refridgerated, they should develope at room temp.

[Pete-zza]

Kermit,

If you want to read more on this subject, you might want to the Didier Rosada articles at http://web.archive.org/web/20040814193817/cafemeetingplace.com/archives/food3_apr2004.htm and at http://web.archive.org/web/20050829015510/www.cafemeetingplace.com/archives/food4_dec2004.htm. From those articles, you will see how bigas are made and how they differ from other types of preferments.

Peter

[dmcavanagh]

Thanks Peter, very informative links.