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So I had to refresh my two starters today (Clyde - 100% rye, and Gertie - white flour), and don't have time to bake tomorrow. I remembered reading in the Reinhart book that you can replace the pre-ferment in a rustic dough with the barm from a white flour - no need to feed and activate first. Hey, I'm game!

So here's the recipe, from The Bread Baker's Apprentice (still my favorite book!):

biga 2cp/10.8oz Fancy or extra fancy durum flour and unbleached bread flour, in any combination (such as 50/50 blend) 2 1/4cp/10oz Salt 1 1/2tsh/0.38oz Instant yeast 1tsp/0.11oz Mashed potatoes (optional) 1/4cp/2 oz Water, lukewarm (90-100F) 1 to 1 1/8cp / 8-9oz

So after refreshing Gertie, I had about 9.5oz of leftover barm. I topped it up to 10.8oz with bread flour, and I had what looked just like a biga! Lovely :)

I used 50/50 bread/semolina flour for the second ingredient.

The dough is a very wet, rustic dough. Here's what it looked like after about 5 minutes on the hook:

And after dumping it onto my very well floured counter:

The dough gets pulled and folded, then allowed to rest for 30 minutes. This gets repeated twice more before a 2-hour bulk ferment.

I'm currently in my second 30-minute rest! More pictures to follow...

-Joe

Hello all! I am hoping someone can enlighten me on this point...

I recently moved to Argentina, so I am trying to familiarize myself with the different baking ingredients available here. The flour here all seems to be classified with varying numbers of 0's. I must admit I didn't pay much attention to flour types when I was in Canada, so maybe it is the same there and I just didn't notice?

In any case, if someone could tell me what the difference is between, for example,
"Harina de Trigo 000" and "Harina de Trigo 0000", I would be very interested to know!

Thank you,
Robyn

This question was sent to me via email:

I have been making bread since the mid 1970's. During the past few years, I have been experimenting with starters instead of using variations on the straight yeast dough method.

More recently, I have been experimenting with starters, sour dough, and
related approaches based on recipes and instructions from several of
Peter Reinhart’s books. The bread usually comes out fine although
the process is labor-intensive and time-consuming.

With all of the reciepes in several of his books, I seem to wind up
throwing away a lot of starter or seed. Starting with a small
beginning batch, I let it rise. After the indicated period of time, I
work on it for a few minutes. Instructions say to let a portion of the
starter rise again and suggest that I can discard the rest that is not
needed. Too much starter retards growth of the yeast and the ripening
of the dough.

Am I reading the instructions correctly--does the starter/sour dough
method always give the cook excess dough at the end of each step or
rise that must be thrown out?

Thanks to whoever can provide an answer or guidance?

FYI Reinhart was on one of the cooking shows on NPR. Either he or the
host offered an email for listeners with questions. I asked this same
question but did not get an answer.

I believe the answer is yes, you always end up needing to discard some extra starter.

The last story I can find on NPR.org that Peter was in was this story about pizza from November. If anyone can find a more recent one, please post it.