[Sca-cooks] Bread-baking with a biga

[Decker, Terry D.]

Double, triple or quadruple the biga.  If you have a 13 qt. bowl, you can
produce dough for 8 one pound loaves without difficult.  Making more than an
8 loaf batch of dough gets difficult to knead and rise in home baking.

You can retard the rise for 12 to 24 hours in a refrigerator, depending on
the activity of the yeast.  If you need more than that, let the dough go
through the first rise, then shape it, wrap it and freeze it.  The dough can
then be removed from the freezer, placed on the baking tin and allowed to
thaw and rise.

Try using a teaspoon of dry active yeast per pound of bread.  Most two loaf
bread recipes use one to three teaspoons, unless they are producing a
tremendously enriched dough which requires more yeast for proper leavening.

Bear


> I'm planning on baking and freezing bread for my feast.  The
> recipes that look
> the best to me are rustic Italian loaves made with a biga
> (sponge).  How can I
> increase the biga (and the rest of the recipe) to make more
> than 2 loaves'
> worth?  My oven will only hold two round loaves at a time,
> but I figure that I
> can use the fridge to retard the rest of the dough.
>
> Also, how do I substitute active dry yeast in a recipe that
> calls for instant
> yeast?  Or should I?
>
> Brighid ni Chiarain