What is a preferment and why use it?
Preferments are made by taking a portion of the total dough ingredients, mixing them together and leaving to ferment for several hours. In most cases only flour, water and yeast are used. There are exceptions like the sponge which can be made with milk instead of water. Or pate fermentee which is the only one that contains salt.

The ripening time of a preferment will depend on the temperature of the environment and the amount of yeast used. A poolish or biga may ferment for 8 – 16 hours or even more.
A pate fermentee being made by taking a piece of a fully mixed dough can take as little as 6 hours.
The sponge is by far the quickest preferment as it contains all the yeast in a recipe. It can be ready in as little as 45 minutes.

Most breads can be made with preferments and most of the preferments can be used interchangeably with some modification.
Generally, you would preferment 10% 20% of the total flour in a recipe. But there are instances where I have made recipes with up to 50% prefermented flour. Rarely, but still possible is a recipe with 100% prefermented flour.

There are several benefits to a bread made with prefermented flour. The acidity in the preferment can help with strengthening gluten structure making a dough rise upwards instead of spreading out sideways.
Flavour is another major benefit. A slow fermentation creates acids and esters which give the bread a wheaty fermented aroma and a slight tang. Much more complex than any straight through dough.
Keeping quality is another benefit as the more acidic a bread is the longer it will stay fresh. This is especially important for when you are making larger loaves and baking less often. The acids in the bread will prevent mould formation far longer than in a regular dough.
Lastly, the production time of your bread can be reduced when using a preferment. Because it brings so much flavour you will not need a long bulk proof to develop it. By simply mixing a preferment the day before and spending just a few minutes you could potentially save hours the following day.

I like using them as is evident in the Breads with Preferment playlist on my channel. With around 30 recipes using all the preferments listed here.

Read more ➡ https://www.chainbaker.com/preferments/

➡Baker's %    • Baker's Percentage & Dough Hydration ...  
➡Breads with Preferment    • Breads With Preferment  
➡Convert any recipe to preferment    • How to Convert Any Bread Recipe to Pr...  

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CHAPTERS
0:00 Intro
1:31 Poolish
3:30 Biga
5:48 Sponge
8:06 Pate Fermentee
12:22 Side by side comparison
13:52 Notes on temperature control
14:50 Letting them over ferment to see what happens