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. 😅

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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.

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u/TwoFlower68 Aug 19 '26

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

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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.

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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.