Biga
Ready In: 15 mins
Yields: 4 cups
Ingredients
- 1⁄2 teaspoon active dry yeast
- 1⁄4 cup warm water
- 1 1⁄2 cups water, at room temperature
- 3 3⁄4 cups unbleached flour
Directions
- Sprinkle yeast onto the 1/4 cup warm water and let stand approximately 10 minutes until creamy.
- Add rest of water, stir.
- Add flour, one cup at a time and stir.
- Mix with wooden spoon for approximately.
- 4 minutes.
- Oil a bowl three times as large as the mixture's volume and scrape dough into that bowl.
- Cover with plastic wrap and let rise 8-24 hours in a cool room or until triple in volume.
- The longer it sits, the more character it develops.
- If you let it go too long, it will take on sour overtones similar to sourdough starter as a result of the acidic by-products of yeast metabolism.
- If the room is cool enough--60-65 deg.
- F, 24 hours will yield a nice, mellow-flavored biga.
- You only need your first biga to get started.
- Then it is simply a matter of making bread at least once a week or so if you have refrigeration to keep the biga alive.
- If you don't have refrigeration, you would want to make bread every day and save a portion of the new dough you make each day as a starter for tomorrow's bread.
- Just take that portion BEFORE you add salt to the new bread dough.
- In this case, you would keep tomorrow's starter at room temperature.
- Use as you would a sourdough starter.
- For a rough guide, use approximately one cup of biga for a bread recipe calling for 7-8 cups of flour.
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