Talk:Pre-ferment

Good Photo of Pre-Ferment on French Wikipedia

A photo exists on French Wikipedia here [1] which needs verification of its license before transfer to Commons. It then could be used for this article. Can anyone help? Geoff (talk) 00:15, 9 August 2008 (UTC) Done. Geoff (talk) 11:08, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Pre-ferment and sourdough

I have a problem with the equation of sourdough and pre-ferment. In particular, this statement is just plain wrong:

being entirely reliant on wild yeasts 

Sourdough requires lactobacillus, not yeast, though nearly all sourdoughs also contain wild yeast. But this gives the wrong impression, and from the definition, it sounds as if sourdough isn't really a pre-ferment at all. Can somebody comment? Groogle (talk) 05:28, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Sourdough starter is generally considered a type of pre-ferment (which is a very broad category), but that sentence is both wrong as written and directly contradicts the rest of the paragraph.

I'd say that the author perhaps meant that the yeasts in sourdough are always wild, but even that ignores modern reality: you can certainly use commercial yeasts to begin a sourdough starter, and in the case of 'ancient' sourdough starters (they can, and have been, maintained for many decades), it's probably no longer accurate to describe the yeasts as 'wild'.

Please feel free to improve the article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:24, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Article is not historically and factually accurate - many problems.

There are many errors in this article - historical and practical. Maybe someday, when I have more time, I will revisit the Pre-ferment page and make some corrections. For example: biga and poolish ARE NOT limited to commercial yeast, nor have they traditionally been used as described in the article; they have been used for hundreds of years with sourdough.

I would note also that using a metal spoon, not made out of S.S., as shown in the photograph accompanying the article is a big no-no. Metal in contact with a sourdough starter, which is acidic, will cause the starter to have an off taste and the metal will, given enough time, probably kill the start too.

King Arthur has a much better article on their website <http://www.kingarthurflour.com/professional/preferments.html>

ColdBay (talk) 20:41, 30 July 2016 (UTC) coldbay 20160730

Whether metal affects the dough depends upon what kind of metal you're using and how long you leave it in there. Even King Arthur Flour endorses the use of stainless steel for sourdough starters. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:38, 26 November 2020 (UTC)