Baking bread and recent discovery

Being stuck at home, I found another hobby and that is cooking home made bread. I think lot of us are doing it at the moment, aren't we? 
I found it to be really easy actually. I always thought it to be complicated. 
I started to experiment with different flour types and rising times. I found it quiet amusing. 
Then I discovered italian lady's food blog and started to dig in more about the flour types and how to use them better. 
Lot of reading! But what I realized is that italian way of cooking is like a science! For example I discovered that there are two methods to prepare the pastry for the bread. 
Most interesting blog that I discovered is this one from Luisa Ambrosini https://www.tacchiepentole.com/ it is in italian, but if you are fluent or studying the language visit the site. You will find amazing recipes. 

But now I want to talk about my latest discovery - poolish and biga. 
They call poolish and biga "indirect" pastry rising system, because it is like preparation of pre-pastry for bread. Actually, it can be used as well to prepare pizza. 
It is like science there! Based on the strength of the flour you need to calculate the rising time. Then it matters during which season are you preparing the pastry! If summer or winter. 
For example, a short biga made in winter should contain 1% yeast from fours weight and up to 50% water; the rising time will be about 20 hours at 18 ° / 20 ° C. 
In the summer, however, the yeast will be reduced to 0.7% and the water up to 40%; temperatures up to 25 ° C will reduce the time to a maximum of 16 hours.
For long biga instead (we speak of 48 hours of rising) the temperature must be low: + 4 ° C excluding the last 24 hours at + 18 ° C. In the summer, however, it will only take 16 hours. 
So to bake a nice bread you need to know MATH! Why it was not told us in the school, maybe I would have find it more interesting back then. 
The other method they call poolish is similar to biga, but the quantity is different. 

Unlike the biga, poolish is a liquid dough made with the same dose of water and flour.
A liquid dough ferments in less time, with the same yeast, compared to a solid one. The advantage of using poolish is to have a shorter fermentation time.
In fact, we can have Quick Poolish, fermented for 2 - 4 - 8 hours in which the amount of yeast with respect to the weight of the flour varies from (3% - 1.5% - 0.5%).
On the contrary for a Poolish matured from 12 - 18 hours, about 0.2% and 0.1% of yeast will be used on the weight of the flour.

That discovery was like a WOW for me. I have done bread at home experimenting flour types. 
Here is the recipe that I use to do baguettes. It is simple and really good: 

700 gr of flour
520 gr of water
8 gr of yeast
8 gr of salt 

to be cooked in preheated oven 230 degrees for 15-20 minutes. 
Rising time 5 hours, depending of the flour type. 



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