I jump-start fermentation (which boosts flavor) before I begin to mix dough by making a starter. This is a technique used by all artisan bakers. These starters are also known as pre-ferments, and they’re absolutely essential. Basically, they’re just a mixture of small amounts of flour, water, and yeast. When I make starters, sometimes I add nuts, whole grains, or malted or sprouted grains. Every bread calls for its own particular approach, but what all starters have in common is they put yeast to work creating flavor well in advance of mixing the dough.
If you’ve baked your way through other bread books, you may know these different starters by the terms professional bakers use: Poolish is a starter that is 50 percent water and 50 percent flour; a biga has less water in relation to flour and, in my baking, often includes other flours or whole grains; and a levain is a sourdough made with flour and wild yeasts. For this book, I’ve just lumped them together and called them starters. After all, the bread doesn’t care what you call a starter. I’ve found that every starter has a window of time when it’s at its peak, so when I say “ferment for 12 to 14 hours,” at any point in that interval it will produce peak or near-peak flavor. I’ve done a lot of experiments with every bread in this book to establish that sweet spot in time. You’ll get the best results if you follow the suggested times.
GETTING PAST THE STICKY PART
During the first few roll and tuck sequences, while the dough is at its stickiest, dust it with the reserved flour mixture from time to time to keep it dry and manageable. You may also need to add as much as 30 to 50 grams (3 to 5 tablespoons) of additional white flour during the rolling and tucking process. However, the goal is to use only enough flour to keep the dough from sticking. All of my recipes are calculated to use a certain ratio of dry ingredients to liquid. When you add flour to aid in managing the dough, you are changing that ratio, which can affect the final bread. So here, as elsewhere in life, less is often more.
Once the dough is less sticky, you may prefer to roll and tuck by hand, rather than with the scraper. And as your technique and familiarity with working with dough increase, you may wish to forgo the scraper altogether. Rolling and tucking by hand has advantages, including allowing you to be more intimate with the ingredients. When working by hand, lightly dust your hands with flour to keep the dough from sticking. If at any point the dough seems too uncooperative, or if you start feeling frustrated, cover it with a clean kitchen towel, let it rest for a few minutes, then start again.