Baking – Prefermenting the whole sourdough rye bread

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Why is it recommended to preferment only a portion of the dough required to make a sourdough rye bread? What can go wrong if I preferment the whole batch? My current knowledge is that it should only help to get better and more acidic taste – more time for yeast to process starches.

Best Answer

I am still very much an amateur in this area, however my current mental model is that the way to develop more flavor is by slowly cultivating many generations of yeast.

So, the potential problem with letting your young yeast get all the sugar all at once, is that you greatly reduce both the time and the number of generations.

  • One option is let your yeast multiply in a small portion of you total dough before it joins the rest of your dough.
  • Another option is to let your yeast multiply under refrigeration.
  • A third option is to do both.