How to impove the flavor of your bread
Though it may seem a tad complicated, at 1st, it is quite easy to dramatically improve the flavor of your bread.
3 factors: TIME, TEMPERATURE, AND % of HYDRATION.
TIME: modern day yeast works very quickly BUT when it does so, it does not give the good bacteria time to ferment and
bacteria is what gives bread great flavor. You can NOT rush bacteria. It will ferment/grow at its own sweet time.
TEMPERATURE: yeast works at a relative small window of temp. Depending upon what kind of bread you are making, room temp is often the best temp.
HYDRATION %: both yeast and bacteria grow at different rates based upon how wet the pre-ferment is.
What is a pre-ferment ?
A pre-ferment is merely taking a small % of your bread recipe and allowing it to ferment/grow ahead of when you make your final dough.
There are many different names for many different kinds of pre-ferments. The preferment below is called a biga
Example of my preferment for my Italian bread.
113 gram of plain water
88 gram of bread flour. UNBLEACHED !
36 gram whole wheat flour
36 gram of semolina flour
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1/4 th cup of water.
1 tsp yeast
Mix an set aside.
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Mix the water and all of the flours
stir the watered yeast and carefully spoon out ONLY 2 tsp of the yeasted water. Add it to the water/flour mix. THROW ALL OF THE REMAINING YEASTED WATER AWAY.
STIR, STIR, STIR, THE PRE-FERMENT UNTIL IT NO LONGER HAS ANY DRY FLOUR. This Biga will be very thick. COVER WITH PLASTIC WRAP AND ALLOW TO FERMENT AT ROOM TEMP FOR 13-14 HOURS.
When ready, IT SHOULD BE RISEN AT LEAST DOUBLE, have many bubbles, AND SMELL OF ALCOHOL
This pre-ferment is now added to my Italian bread formula and I treat the dough as per usual.