Wild Yeast

When I wrote about the illness of our bread-loving cat last summer, I didn’t know how much longer she would be with us. As it turned out, Stripes made quite a remarkable recovery and was almost her old self for many months — until a few weeks ago, when her chronically failing kidneys started making her sick again. This time, she didn’t bounce back, and she died today.

Farewell, my little friend. I didn’t always like you, but in the end I loved you. Wherever you are, I hope you’re dining sumptuously on mice, tuna, and a nice crusty loaf of sourdough.

This final installment in the Baker’s Percentage tutorial series concerns breads that are made with preferments. (A preferment is a poolish, biga, sponge, sourdough starter, etc., where a portion of the flour is fermented prior to the mixing of the final dough.) If you missed the first three parts, you’ll want to read them before diving into this one. An index of the entire tutorial is here.

A preferment can be thought of in different ways. On one hand, it is a dough unto itself, and it has a BP formula all its own. But a preferment is also an ingredient in the final dough.

Look at this formula for baguette dough made with a poolish. The blue table shows the formula for the final dough, scaled to make 2340 g of dough. The yellow table shows the formula for the poolish, scaled to make 936 g, the amount needed for the final dough. Note that the formula for each part is based on the amount of flour needed for that part. Also note that the poolish is listed as an ingredient in the final dough formula.

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Happy Mother’s Day to my mom J, my mother-in-law MJ, and my sister L: three of the best mothers I know!

Rustic fruit desserts are my favorite, and I almost always order one if it’s on the menu when we eat out. (My husband likes to guess what dessert I’ll choose, and he’s usually right because my taste is so predictable.) However, unless there’s a birthday or holiday to be celebrated, or a Daring Bakers challenge to try to conquer, I rarely bake desserts of any kind at home.

But the rhubarb and kumquats that were yesterday’s impulse buys at the farmer’s market got me pining for something chunky and tart and sweet and coarse and juicy and messy and perfect in its imperfection. A galette of the rhubarb and kumquats along with some of the other market bounty — strawberries and basil — seemed about right.

I’m submitting this as my first entry for Weekend Herb Blogging, the venerable and popular event founded by Kalyn (Kalyn’s Kitchen) and hosted this week by Anh of Food Lover’s Journey. I think both rhubarb and kumquats are interesting enough to merit “featured plant” status, so I randomly picked the kumquats.

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