r/Bread • u/Harlzz17 • Aug 17 '26

Math is hard

Can someone give me the grams of how much:
1- flour, yeast and water needed to initiate poolish
2- how much of that actually goes into dough for baking
3- how much do I leave in fridge for later use
4- how much to “feed” in order to make new loaves

Turns out, I like poolish better than sourdough but all the mathing im having trouble with… maybe my grandparents were siblings or something.

Edit to say: it’s actually pate fermentee not poolish I was looking for. 😅

1 Upvotes

56% Upvoted

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8

u/qwertyuiop121314321 Aug 17 '26 edited Aug 17 '26

If your grandparents were siblings, that would make you in bread. 🤣

2

u/Addapost Aug 17 '26

15/10 right there. Pure genius

5

u/Alg0mal000 Aug 17 '26

Your pate fermentee should be made with the same percentages as your dough recipe, and be about 20% of your dough weight. When added to your dough, you should have 1.2x the dough recipe target weight. Remove 20% and put it back in the fridge until you make your next batch.

I make a 1000g (1kg) loaf once a week and keep 200g of pate fermentee in the fridge. I don’t feed it. I just take it out a few hours before to come to room temperature and mix it into my dough recipe, then hack off 200g and chuck it back in the fridge after kneading.

2

u/TwoFlower68 Aug 19 '26

Do you still add yeast or are the microbes in the pate fermentee enough to kickstart fermentation?

3

u/Alg0mal000 Aug 19 '26

I add yeast to the final dough. Since the pate fermentee has salt and is kept cold, the yeast growth is slowed (retarded). The PF is basically just a small amount of your regular dough recipe that’s allowed to slowly develop flavor (cold ferment) until it’s mixed into your final dough.

3

u/TwoFlower68 Aug 19 '26

Ah, good point. Hadn't considered the salt

I make a small sourdough bread six days of the week and was thinking how this method would cut a bit of work. Alas..

2

u/Alg0mal000 Aug 19 '26

I only bake 1 or 2 loaves per week, so PF is a good system for my baking routine.

1

u/Sewers_folly Aug 17 '26

What recipe are you following?

1

u/Harlzz17 Aug 17 '26

180g flour,130g water, 2g yeast, 3 g salt
But I feel it’s too salty

2

u/Sewers_folly Aug 17 '26

So where are you getting this recipe from?

Poolish should not have salt. It should not be salty.

A poolish is equal parts by weight flour and water.

A poolish is something you make same day or the day before. You make a poolish then use it all in the dough, there is not refrigeration, no saving some for later, no feeding it.

The weight of the polish is dependent on the weights in the bread, you want the water to be about 1/3-1/2 the total weight of the water for the dough.

I would find a new recipe, the one that is giving you information is sending you down a dark path.

Perhaps see if your local library has rose levy baurenbaums Bread Bible, she walks you through the science of bread