Southern Bread

Now, for the last step in making our fantastic bread totally from scratch. The secret to great bread is using what’s called a pre-ferment, or “sponge.”  It’s a simple concept. You pre-mix some of your flour and yeast water and let it sit for 48 to 72 hours. This lets the yeast get a good head start on growing a good colony and really helps the flavour. Your probably already familiar with at least one type of pre-ferment called “sourdough.” We won’t be making sourdough bread though, so we will make a “biga” pre-ferment which is just a 50/50 water to flour mix. It’s easy. Here’s the recipe:

Dry Ingredients:

• 1/2 Cup Bread Flour
• 1/2 Cup Wheat Flour

Wet Ingredients:

• 1 Cup (8 oz.) Yeast Water

Directions:

1. Combine flour and yeast water in a medium sized container, something about the size of a pickle jar.  Cover with a clean hand towel and let sit for 48 to 72 hours.  If you can’t use it immediately after the 72 hours is up, just lid it and stick it in the fridge until ready to use.
2. After 24 hours it will start to look like a sponge, with large air holes all in it.  This is the yeast doing it’s magic.

That’s all there is to it. The yeast in our home grown yeast water will take over and begin to grow and produce great flavours as they eat the sugars in the mixture. Remember, it’s the yeast that makes bread taste like bread. That’s why this pre-ferment makes such a big difference in flavour. It’s also very important that you remember to subtract these amounts from your main ingredients list for your bread.  So instead of using 6 oz. of water and 5 oz. of milk, just leave out the water from the final recipe.  Adjust the flour amounts down to compensate as well.  I’ve read that a pre-ferment also helps the bread to preserve longer.  I don’t understand the chemistry involved in that so I’ll just have take that on faith.

In the next post we will put it all together and give a complete scratch bread recipe with full instructions. Now go make your pre-ferment.