The recipe can be found in Peter Reinhart’s Bread Baker’s Assistant (click the Canadian link here). Because it’s his own recipe and we’re part of the BBA Challenge, making every recipe in the book, it was agreed that it would be highly unethical (and time consuming) to write out each recipe when we’re using his book as a sort of “bible”. If he deserves enough respect for us to follow his recipes in the book, he also deserves to not have 200+ people giving them all away.

However, I would strongly recommend you do get a copy as there are a lot of great breads in there, as you can see if you bop around between all the BBA Challengers. It’s definitely a good bread book to have at hand.

The biga is simply a bit of dough you mix a day or so before baking day and allow to rise and ferment ahead of making the actual bread so that you can impart the flavour of a long-standing dough (flavour greatly enhances when the dough is left to ferment/rise over extended time) without having to specifically ferment the dough for this particular bread. You’re fermenting a small portion ahead of time, in other words.

In a bakery this is really important because you can’t be having several hundred pounds of dough sitting idly by fermenting for a day or two but it’s easy to have a smaller amount doing so and pluck out what you need when you make a batch of this or that type bread.

This is also explained in much better detail in Mr Reinhart’s book (and others, of course).

And yes, it is quite wonderful bread, I’ve made it several times now. I make a point of “accidentally” making too much mashed potatoes on a regular basis.

This one is next on the list and it sounds so awesome!!

If not in the bread, you can certainly put some on it! Would be delish! Some nice sharp aged cheddar I imagine… Yum!