Penny Wise and a Pound of Poolish

Last week before I set out on the wood-fired pizza adventure, I started a new batch of pizza dough following a different recipe than my own: I used one based on a poolish starter from Peter Reinhart's excellent bread baking book Crust & Crumb: Master Formulas for Serious Bread Bakers.

Without going into too much detail, it turned out delicious. It had a fairly crispy bottom but less chewiness at the edge than I like. This might be due to my choice of flour for that batch--I didn't have any bread flour, and used an all-purpose flour from King Arthur Flour Company. I think if I had used a higher-gluten flour, the results would have been even better.

I did indeed end up with a pound of poolish. Luckily in addition to making pizza dough, you can use a poolish as the base for many great breads, including foccacia! Yum!