Anthony Mangieri Video

[Pete-zza]

Peter, can you pass along the (non-working) link? There are half a dozen archives, that may have saved a copy of the old page.

.

pacoast,

Toby has found the non-working links. I couldn't find the articles either after searching the cafemeeting.com website. The article at the bakerconnection.com website is similar to the first Rosada article (part 1) but it is not identical. However, it does discuss the old dough/prefermented dough method. There is also a part 2.

Peter

[Infoodel]

OK I found a way to retrieve the pages.
Here are the wayback/archive links:-

Part 1:

http://web.archive.org/web/20040814193817/cafemeetingplace.com/archives/food3_apr2004.htm

Part 2:

http://web.archive.org/web/20050829015510/www.cafemeetingplace.com/archives/food4_dec2004.htm

No pictures, that I can get I'm afraid - but the text is there.

Cheers,

Toby

[Pete-zza]

Toby,

You did the forum a great service by finding the Rosada articles. Rosada is more of a "purist" and a traditionalist in the way he treats and discusses preferments. That is a good starting point for bakers to understand preferments and, over time, to modify and improve them, whether for making bread dough or pizza dough. In the past, I have often discussed his work but was not able to link others to his articles. I think it is a good idea to print out the articles.

Peter

[Matthew]

Toby,
Fantastic articles, thanks so much for digging them up.

Matt

[scott r]

great article!   I particularly loved the section discussing the effects of a poolish on protease activity, something I had not considered when conducting my previous experiments.  I will be going back and doing more testing with a bit of salt in my room temperature preferments now. 

[Mo]

It's ironic/funny that in the UPN menu it says "fresh dough is made every day. Dough leftover at a day's end is simply thrown out." Except, of course, for the dough he uses for the next batch, right?

[Pete-zza]

Scott,

When I was reading Professor Calvel's book, The Taste of Bread, he talked about using salt in the starter, as I noted in the last sentence of Reply 13 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,3220.msg66518.html#msg66518.

Peter

[Infoodel]

Heh Mo.
 while the UPN room temp was probably more influenced by the firing of the oven than anything else, I am kind of amused at the thought of Anthony reserving less dough in the summer months for mixing the levain - so perhaps you were more likely to get a pizza at UPN before 'dough ran out' in July than say December. Probably totally untrue but amusing to contemplate nonetheless.

Scott  re: poolish
In a situation where final dough fermentation time has to be relatively short (one of the main reasons preferments are used at all) a poolish is one option to help add extensibility to the dough. That's one of the reasons it sometimes gets used in making baguettes. Biga, by contrast, has less protease activity and can be used to s add dough strength - the sort of thing you might need in making high hydration dough (eg ciabatta)
As Pete mentions - one can add salt to a preferment or starter - especially when using room temp. preferments.
Didier Rosada mentions this in the Fall 2002, SFBI newsletter:
"
In addition to improving bread flavor, salt is
useful in controlling the activity of preferments.
When a preferment, such as poolish or sponge, is maturing too
quickly due to warmer temperatures,adding .2 to .3% salt is just
enough to slow down activity without interfering with aroma.
Just remember that when the quantity of salt in the final dough is
calculated, the amount of salt used in the preferment must be
considered.
When a stiff levain is becoming liquid or mushy in the center,this
is a sign of undesirably intense enzyme activity (protease) between
feedings. As little as .1% of salt incorporated during the feeding
of the culture will be enough to noticeably slow down the
protease of the flour and bring your sourdough culture to a
normal consistency—without interfering with the microorganism
activity of the sourdough. "

Cheers,
Toby

edit: I'm not sure if it's relevant but I thought perhaps clarificationw was needed  between  the terms 'preferment' and 'levain'.   While a levain is technically a preferment, its main purpose (as the name suggests) is to act as a leavening agent for the dough.  On the other hand, a preferment is essentially a 'shortcut' - some percentage of the total flour that has been prefermented to impart various flavour and dough characteristics to the final dough without the need for a long fermentation in the final stages. It's essentially dividing up the total dough fermentation into two stages which can make life easier in a commercial bakery.  Additional baker's yeast is usually introduced in the final mixing stage, proportional to the remaining flour to be added. When dealing with 100% sourdough breads/doughs  the term levain and preferment can be used roughly interchangeably, since no additional leavening agent is being added in the final dough.
Of course the subtleties and advantages imparted by preferments/levains reach far beyond convenience. They can be used in many different ways.  One of the most extreme examples I've come across isthe 'Caramelized Hazelnut Squares' recipe in Advanced Bread and Pastry. As I recall, it used 4 different preferments/levains!  I can't find the recipe right now but here's a link to the results:
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/10593/caramelized-hazelnut-squares

[pizzablogger]

Toby, so like, do I have to move to Britain to open a pizza shop with you, or are you coming over here?

[scpizza]

...In a situation where final dough fermentation time has to be relatively short (one of the main reasons preferments are used at all)...

...a preferment is essentially a 'shortcut' - some percentage of the total flour that has been prefermented to impart various flavour and dough characteristics to the final dough without the need for a long fermentation in the final stages. It's essentially dividing up the total dough fermentation into two stages which can make life easier in a commercial bakery....

...Of course the subtleties and advantages imparted by preferments/levains reach far beyond convenience....

I see how preferments can produce unique flavor/dough characteristics.  I don't see how they yield major time or flexibility benefits versus direct fermentation.  In fact using a preferment adds more steps and complexity to the doughmaking process.  One must still know final batch size to know how much preferment to make.  And the preferment itself needs to be started no less far in advance than a direct fermentation.

[s00da]

The best dough flavor I currently achieve with IDY is using a 24 hours room temp. fermentation. Bulk for 19 hours and then balled and proofed for 5 hours. One thing I noticed is that by the bake time, the dough has a sweaty and sticky surface which is most likely caused by the protease enzyme. What I'm thinking is, what if I use a preferment? Would I achieve the same flavor and avoid this protease effect? This would greatly increase the usability window of the dough.

Might be worth trying.

[pizzablogger]

What I'm thinking is, what if I use a preferment? Would I achieve the same flavor and avoid this protease effect? This would greatly increase the usability window of the dough.

That's one of the major reasons a pre-ferment is used to help acheive more developed flavors in a dough.....with the pre-ferment, you are able to imbue the finished product with developed flavors without the entire dough bill fermenting for too long.....pre-ferments help to avoid the eventual collapse of the glutten structure which eventually occurs during long fermentations of direct dough.

A pre-ferment can also be created and then stored for eventual use later on, so it very much increases the usability window of the dough from that persective as well.

[Infoodel]

I see how preferments can produce unique flavor/dough characteristics.  I don't see how they yield major time or flexibility benefits versus direct fermentation.  In fact using a preferment adds more steps and complexity to the doughmaking process.  One must still know final batch size to know how much preferment to make.  And the preferment itself needs to be started no less far in advance than a direct fermentation.

The flexibility only really becomes apparent in a commercial bakery where you might have 5 different types of bread all using poolish (for example). It makes things simpler and allows a baker to make a wide range of breads with a relatively simple workflow. The final dough takes less time from mixing to finished product. A poolish can sit unattended while bakers are either off work or doing something else - plus it's not taking up valuable refrigeration space which might be used for croissants, brioche etc.

There's nothing wrong per se with making all your dough using direct mix. You can get great tasting results that way - but it won't be the same. Preferments aren't superior in that sense, they are just a useful alternative. One which Anthony Mangieri clearly chose to use.
Since sourdough bread/pizza dough is inherently preferment/levain based,  the debate of direct vs preferment is kind of moot.

Toby

[pacoast]

Pete-zza, Just FYI. It's really helpful that you reference various sources of information for further reading. Of course external links often die after a period of time. So you may find it useful use an archive search engine. Just plug the dead link into the search engine to see if they have a copy of the material that the link used to point to. As long as the content owner doesn't specifically object, you can even click to have current material archived to guard against a link "dying" in the future.

The best known of these archives is the Wayback machine, which can be used as a search engine for broken links. It's the address that I mentioned earlier in this thread - http://web.archive.org/collections/web/advanced.html

.

[Pete-zza]

pacoast,

Thank you for the explanation. I missed your highlighting of the word "archives" in your post at Reply 38 so it wasn't until I saw what Toby did in Reply 41 that I saw what you meant. I will have to try an archive search engine with some of the very informative and useful links to posts that used to reside in the PMQ Think Tank forum before they scuttled it in favor of the current forum setup.

Peter

[scpizza]

It makes things simpler and allows a baker to make a wide range of breads with a relatively simple workflow. The final dough takes less time from mixing to finished product.

I don't understand that.  If a baker must do one unique batch mix for each type of dough anyway, leavening the mix with preferment instead of yeast is not saving any effort.  Morever, unless he is using the old dough method, he had to spend additional time to make the preferment.

While the final dough takes less time from the mixing that incorporated the preferment, it takes no less time from the initial mixing of the preferment itself.  I don't see any net time savings.

A poolish can sit unattended while bakers are either off work or doing something else - plus it's not taking up valuable refrigeration space which might be used for croissants, brioche etc.

A direct dough can sit unattended while bakers are doing something else just the same.  As to refrigeration space, if bakers intend to continue the cool rise after the final mix then they will need to cool the water and/or flour to be added anyway, perhaps using the very same refrigeration space.

Since sourdough bread/pizza dough is inherently preferment/levain based,  the debate of direct vs preferment is kind of moot.

True with sourdough bread.  But debatable with sourdough pizza that often is made from small quantities of starter that one could argue are not true preferments.

[Infoodel]

I don't understand that.  If a baker must do one unique batch mix for each type of dough anyway, leavening the mix with preferment instead of yeast is not saving any effort.  Morever, unless he is using the old dough method, he had to spend additional time to make the preferment.

While the final dough takes less time from the mixing that incorporated the preferment, it takes no less time from the initial mixing of the preferment itself.  I don't see any net time savings.

I never said anything about 'net time savings'. It's making a bakery's workflow easier that counts. Unlike a levain, (Baker's) yeasted preferments are not  typically added to leaven the final dough but to add specific flavour and dough characteristics. They're used like an ingredient. For example - they can add extensibility or strength to a dough and aid dough development where one might otherwise require intensive mixing.

A direct dough can sit unattended while bakers are doing something else just the same.  As to refrigeration space, if bakers intend to continue the cool rise after the final mix then they will need to cool the water and/or flour to be added anyway, perhaps using the very same refrigeration space

That's the point of the preferment. You don't need a cool rise after the final mix. It's like mixing a 'quick' dough at the end. All the flavour benefits are already present in the preferment.
I'm not saying you CAN'T mix a direct dough- many people do - but if you have a number of breads which could all benefit from the same preferment - it's kind of daft not to at least consider incorporating it into your workflow. A bakery might have, say, two preferments it mixes every day. As I said above, these are used just like 'ingredients' - in the same way as flour, water or salt.
The logistics of a commercial bakery are quite different from home baking.

True with sourdough bread.  But debatable with sourdough pizza that often is made from small quantities of starter that one could argue are not true preferments.

A starter, regardless of quantity is a preferment by its very nature. So whether someone uses a lot or a little, one is relying on the nature of the preferment; more so in sourdough, perhaps, than in any other type of bread (or pizza). Whether that is effective in the final product, is where the skill lies.

[Pete-zza]

In his book The Taste of Bread, Professor Raymond Calvel presents a table, Exhibit 4-2 Schematic Comparison of Baking Methods, at page 46, in which he lays out the total elapsed times for seven different dough making methods. One can see that table by going to Amazon.com and using the "look inside" feature for the The Taste of Bread book. For search purposes, I used "Exhibit 4-2 Schematic Comparison of Baking Methods". For those who can't access the exhibit for any reason, I believe I can summarize it. However, what is clear from the exhibit is that, except for a natural sourdough preferment or Levain dePate (a hybrid of natural starter and commercial yeast), once a preferment is on hand and ready to use, the total time between mixing and baking is shorter than for the straight dough method. For example, if a poolish is on hand and ready to be used, the total elapsed time between mixing and baking is given as 4 hours and 45 minutes. For a straight dough, the elapsed time from mixing to baking is given as 6 hours. Similarly, for a prefermented dough (a "new" old dough or a piece of a prior day's dough) that is on hand and ready to use, the total elapsed time from mixing to baking is also 4 hours and 45 minutes. Naturally, for a Levain dePate or natural sourdough preferment, the total elapsed times between mixing and baking are longer, 5 hours and 15 minutes in the case of the Levain dePate and 6 hours and 45 minutes in the case of the natural sourdough preferment.

So, it depends when you start the clock running. In a typical home setting with occasional or sporadic use of preferments, the total elapsed time from start to finish using preferments will be longer than for the straight dough method. But if you are a baker and have preferments ready to go on a daily basis, except for the Levain dePate and the natural sourdough preferment, the total elapsed time from the point a preferment is actually used up to the point of baking is shorter than for the straight dough method. Professor Calvel does not specifically address biga or sponge preferments in the abovereferenced exhibit, but I believe that they would behave like the poolish in terms of elapsed times.

Peter

[scpizza]

From a business efficiency standpoint I would be focused on the least total time from flour and water to finished product and the fewest number of mixing steps to make that journey.  Using preferments that's a longer total time and an extra mixing step.

Fridge space savings notwithstanding, I see the only major benefit of preferments to be the unique flavor/dough characteristics they bring - and that's a major benefit!

[scpizza]

BTW, some of the missing pictures from the article are here: http://www.bakerconnection.com/artisanbaker/article_04.htm