What is the purpose of making a preferment for yeast doughs?
I have found a number of bread recipes that call to prepare first a preferment - a very simple dough with half the flour, water, sometimes sugar, and the yeast to be used. This is left to rise for an hour or two and afterwards it is mixed with a dough made with the rest of the ingredients including fats, additional sugars, and eggs. This second dough is then left to rise again and later split into the loafs and baked.
What is the purpose of the preferment and why is sponge made with such basic ingredients?
Best Answer
In addition to allowing fermentation to begin before the addition of fermentation inhibiting other ingredients, as @J.A.I.L. said in his answer, according to Bread Secrets, after explaining the benefits to flavor of a long, slow fermentation:
A quick, warm fermentation will allow time for the yeast to produce enough carbon dioxide to raise the dough, but not enough time for the enzymes to work or for the development of the other flavour compounds. If we ferment our dough for too long, however, the gluten becomes too weak to hold the shape of the loaf. So artisan bakers generally use a preferment (pre-ferment, not prefer-ment!) as part of their dough. This allows the bread to gain flavour from the longer fermentation, but still maintain a strong gluten network for a good rise.
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Quick Answer about "What is the purpose of making a preferment for yeast doughs?"
As a preferment adds acidity into the dough at the beginning, less time is needed for fermentation than for a straight dough. The more preferment you use, the less time is needed for the first and second rise. The less you use, the longer the fermentation time but you get fully flavour development.What is the point of preferment?
A preferment is a preparation of a portion of a bread dough that is made several hours or more in advance of mixing the final dough. The preferment can be of a stiff texture, it can be quite loose in texture, or it can simply be a piece of mixed bread dough. Some preferments contain salt, others do not.What is a yeast preferment?
A preferment is a mixture of dough that is mixed separately from the bread dough and allowed to ferment on its own prior to mixing the dough. Sometimes preferments are mixed the day before, fermenting slowly overnight.What are the advantages to use preferment in sourdough bread making?
Preferments leverage one simple fact; longer and slower bulk fermentation and proofing stages make for better bread....This has a couple of distinct benefits:What is the purpose of a sponge in bread making?
A sponge is just as it sounds: a bubbled mixture of flour, water and a touch of yeast. For a rather low-rent approach, it produces rather phenomenal results: a crust and flavor like sourdough, with less of the taste that some sourdough haters can do without, due to shortened pre-fermentation.Yeasted Preferments Explained | Poolish, Biga, Sponge, Pâte Fermentée
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Answer 2
Fats and sugars above certain levels inhibit the grown of yeasts. if you add them since the begining to an enriched dough like this, it will start growing very slowly, and take a long time to rise.
By adding just the food for the yeasts (that is: flour and maybe a bit of sugar to feed the yeasts) you allow them to grow in number and when the population is large enough to deal with them, you can add the rest of the ingredients.
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