Poolish – a wet preferment for an airy dough
Poolish is equal parts flour and water plus a pinch of yeast. How to make it, what a ready poolish looks like and how to build the dough from it.
Quick answer: poolish is a wet preferment – equal parts flour and water (100 % hydration) plus a pinch of yeast (0.1–0.2 %) – left to ferment for 8–16 hours at room temperature before being mixed into the rest of the dough. It gives a lighter, more open crumb than biga.
How to make it
Weigh out equal parts flour and water in a bowl, dissolve a pinch of yeast in the water first, mix and cover. A ready poolish is covered in bubbles on the surface and has sunk slightly in the middle – a sign that it has passed its peak and is good to go. Wait too long and it turns watery and loses structure.
Poolish compared with biga
The high water content of a poolish lets the enzymes work faster and more freely than in a compact biga, which gives a more distinctly airy, irregular crumb rather than biga’s chewier crust. Which one you choose is more about the texture you want than about which is ”better” – the comparison lives in biga or poolish.
Work out the whole schedule with the calculator, and see the house recipe it builds on in Neapolitan pizza dough.
