A Tale of Two Preferments

with apologies to C. Dickens.

The Levain (Charles St. Evrémonde)
I was gone for the two summer months this year.  As this is the first year that I’ve had a levain starter, I decided to “protect my investment” by dividing it into roughly thirds.  One third was spread thin, dried, flaked and placed into a sealed jar.  Another third was double zip-locked and placed into the freezer.  And the last third was treated as I always treat my levain starter when I refresh it.  I wrapped it in cellophane wrap and chucked it into the refrigerator.

As a note, I always play it safe by preserving a chunk of my working starter when it is time for a refresh.  Force of habit, anal-retentive, whatever, but I feel that it is a small price to pay for a little peace of mind and the ever-important back-up.

Here is a picture of the little triumvirate.

In order to revive the starter, decided to try bringing the dried flakes back to life and relied on the steps outlined in a post from Fellow Loafian GAPOMA, found at
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/comment/142323#comment-142323 .  It worked like a charm, and I was back in business.  Here’s a result from earlier this week.

The Poolish (Sydney Carton)
As I’ve mentioned a few time here in some of my very few posts, I still basically concentrate on baguettes only.  Practice makes kind-a perfect.  And in this past year since getting the home baking bug, I’ve pretty much stuck with alternating between Instant Dried Yeast and levain baguettes, but all with long cold fermentations.  I had almost forgotten about poolish baguettes.  But not the other evening, when I didn’t have enough time for any of my standard go-to formulae.  I decided to bake a set of baguettes using a 33% overnight poolish at ~71% hydration.  

Just for fun and experimentation I also decided to mix the AP flour with water and then give it an overnight refrigerated autolyse.  In the AM the poolish was a-bubblin’ away, but I had a few tasks to do for a few hours, so I placed it in the refrigerator for a bit of a cold sleep.

When I did retrieve the poolish and the autolysed blob, I left them out on the counter for a warm up prior to a final mix.  But not long enough to completely warm up.  And so the mix by hand (always by hand with me) was quite difficult as the autolysed half of the partnership was still quite chilly and just not very cooperative.  After giving my forearms a workout, I was able to successfully complete the mix and then go to my standard French Fold step.  

And they baked up quite nicely too.  My wife described the final result as “light, doughy, eggy, almost like a popover”  and the crust had that dark baked crunch that I cherish so much.  Later, after having been gone for a few hours and returning home, the smells still coming from the kitchen reminded me of something like a cake that had been baked.  Here’s a picture.

The verdict (Madame Defarge)
Well, there really isn’t any verdict here.  Just a post-note.  The poolish baguettes were fabulous on the day baked, but by day 2 (today) had lost a step.  The levain baguettes baked on Thursday evening still had some legs this morning and the superior taste.  As a note, after the first day, just about all bread all makes it into my toaster, so the flavor impression is based on toast.  But after more well over a half century of being a toast aficionado, I can still call ‘em as I see/taste ‘em.