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Recipe · v1.0

Batard on old dough

Wheat · hearth · lean

Theoretical recipe. This formula has not been baked by the author yet. Real results and photos will appear after the first bake. For now it is an experiment plan and a basis for discussion.

A lean artisan wheat batard built on salted old dough (pate fermentee): overall baker's percentages, batard shaping, scoring, steam, and a deeper flavor without new flour.

16 h 35 min Until bake ends
16 h 5 min Until bake starts
30 min Bake time
1 hearth batard (~600–630 g after baking) Yield
Open worksheet
When to bake~16 h to bake

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Calculated for the current time; the worksheet lets you set any start.

Recipe

Current recipe

For baking now: the final working formula, ingredients, steps, and baking worksheet.

Taste & texture

The crust bakes to a deep golden-brown with an audible crackle, firm under the knife and giving way to a soft, mildly chewy crumb with irregular pores. Flavor is the main reward of old dough: a rounder, nuttier wheat taste with a faint aromatic tang that straight-yeast dough simply has not had time to build. There is no sourness — the salt inside the preferment keeps fermentation calm — but the finish is longer and more complex than a plain yeast loaf. Keeping is noticeably better: the loaf stays in good condition for up to two days at room temperature.

As described by: King Arthur Baking: preferments , Bake-Street: how to make bread with old dough

Baking worksheet

Formula 400 g flour, 272 g water, 8 g salt, 2.5 g fresh yeast; dough about 683 g
Old dough 120 g flour + 78 g water + 2.4 g salt + 0.3 g fresh yeast, 11–12 hours to a mature smell and porosity
Salt math old dough already holds 2.4 g of salt, so only 5.6 g go into the final dough — together the recipe's 8 g; the easiest error is double salt
Maturity old dough should be porous and bread-smelling, not over-soured, alcoholic, or collapsed in wet strings
Hydration 68%: above a baseline loaf, below ciabatta, so attention stays on fermentation and shaping
Format 1 hearth batard — a steady control shape for comparing preferments
Final proof 45–60 minutes: the piece should feel lighter but keep tension for scoring
Bake 250 °C with steam for the first 10 minutes, then 220 °C dry for 18–22 minutes to a confident crust and 96–98 °C internal

Good to know

Why is S1-C7 not focaccia?

Research showed that focaccia introduces oil and a sheet pan, which moves S1 away from the lean track. After poolish and biga, it is more logical to close out one more classic yeasted preferment — old dough.

How does old dough differ from biga and poolish?

It is a piece of already-mixed dough: it contains flour, water, salt, and yeast. So the main error is forgetting the salt inside the old dough and adding the full 8 g of salt a second time.

Can I use a piece of yesterday's dough?

Yes, that is the historical logic of pate fermentee, but for a teaching repeat it is better to mix a separate old dough with known mass, salt, and water.

What counts as success?

Even batard, opened score, clean mature aroma, a deeper flavor without a sharp alcohol note and without oversalting.

This batard is built not on a flashy ingredient but on bakery discipline: a salted old dough (pate fermentee) folded into a lean wheat dough. After poolish and biga it is easy to assume all preferments differ only in consistency. Old dough breaks that idea — it is not flour with water and yeast, but a small piece of fully built dough that already carries salt. The reward is a deeper, more mature bread flavor without moving to sourdough; the risk is double-salting the loaf if you forget the salt already living in the preferment.

The batard shape is deliberate. It is not a baguette and not a ciabatta, but a steady control shape that lets you compare what the preferment did to flavor while crust, scoring, and steam stay familiar.

How it’s baked around the world and why

Old dough is one of the oldest tricks in bread, and almost every baking culture has its own name for it. In France it is pâte fermentée — literally “fermented dough” — a piece pinched off yesterday’s lean dough and dropped into today’s mix. French bakers leaned on it because it gives a baguette or batard a rounder, nuttier flavor and a touch more strength without the daily upkeep of a sourdough culture. Italy uses the same idea under the looser name pasta di riporto, the dough that gets “carried over” from one bake to the next.

Why it works the same way everywhere: a mature old dough delivers organic acids, alcohols, and broken-down proteins that a fresh straight dough simply has not had time to build. Those compounds deepen aroma and crust color and make the gluten a little more extensible. The salt inside it is the cultural signature — bakers who pull from a finished dough are also carrying its salt and its slower, calmer fermentation, which is exactly why old dough resists going sharply sour the way an unsalted poolish can.

The modern caution is honesty. Modernist Bread points out that the differences between commercial preferments are routinely overstated: once overall hydration and total fermentation time match, poolish, biga, and old dough land closer together than legend suggests. So treat old dough as a controlled process variable — a reliable way to add maturity and manage salt math — not as guaranteed magic. If the flavor does not deepen, look first at crust color, maturity, and fermentation, not at the name of the preferment.

Old dough: how it works

Old dough literally means fermented dough. Historically it could be a piece of yesterday’s French dough added into a new mix. In a home teaching recipe it is better not to take a random piece of unknown dough but to make a small controlled old dough in the evening.

The key difference: old dough already contains salt.

| Element | What it does | Error | | --- | --- | --- | | Flour in the old dough | ferments ahead of time and brings maturity | treating it as an addition rather than part of overall flour | | Water | enters overall hydration | adding final water as if the old dough were not there | | Salt | slows fermentation and is already part of the overall 2% | adding the full 8 g of salt a second time | | Yeast | starts overnight maturation | giving it too much and getting an alcoholic smell | | Time | builds aroma and a fermentation base | waiting only by the clock and not watching the state |

The old mass should be porous, plastic, and smelling of bread. If it smells of sharp alcohol, has dropped, and tears in wet strings, that is not “more flavor” but overmaturity, and you should expect a weaker structure.

Formula

| Ingredient | Grams | % | | --- | ---: | ---: | | Flour | 400 | 100 | | Water | 272 | 68 | | Salt | 8 | 2 | | Fresh yeast | 2.5 | 0.625 |

Old dough: 120 g flour, 78 g water, 2.4 g salt, 0.3 g fresh yeast.

Final dough: all of the old dough, 280 g flour, 174 g water in the initial mix, 20 g water for the yeast slurry, 5.6 g salt, and 2.2 g fresh yeast.

The state of the old dough matters more than the clock.

If Something Goes Wrong

  • Bread oversalted → the final salt went in without subtracting the salt already in the old dough; it should be 2.4 g in the preferment plus 5.6 g in the final dough.
  • Alcoholic smell → the old dough over-matured or had too much yeast; lower the overnight temperature or yeast next time and watch the morning dome.
  • Dense pieces in the crumb → the old dough was poorly torn or the rest was too short; tear it smaller, give the hydration rest, and mix more gently.
  • Dense crumb overall → gas loss, underfermentation, or too tight a shape; revisit bulk, folds, the rest after preshape, and the proof.
  • Score did not open → overproof, weak steam, or a shallow cut; check the poke test, steam, and the depth and angle of the score before touching the old dough.
  • Flavor does not differ → a pale crust, undermature old dough, or slicing too early; push crust color, maturity, and cooling.

Sources

Ingredients

Change any amount — the rest rescale by the bread’s formula.

Component Grams Baker's %
MukaMuka 13.5% flour g 100%
Water g 68%
Salt g 2%
Fresh yeast g 0.63%

Ingredient details

MukaMuka 13.5% flour

Role
the same strong white flour, so that old dough rather than grain flavor is the main new variable
Split across stages
120 g into the old dough and 280 g into the final dough
Brand the author uses
MukaMuka 13.5% protein (mukamuka.ru)
Alternatives
Aleyna Vivapol 12-13%, Makfa premium grade

Water

Role
68% gives a more plastic batard while keeping shaping manageable after S1-C6
Split across stages
78 g into the old dough, 174 g into the initial final mix, and 20 g for the yeast slurry
Brand the author uses
Tap water through Barrier Iron x2 filter
Alternatives
any filtered or bottled drinking water

Salt

Important
2.4 g of salt are already inside the old dough; only 5.6 g go into the final dough
Brand the author uses
Pink Himalayan salt
Alternatives
sea or table salt (avoid iodized)

Fresh yeast

Split across stages
0.3 g into the old dough and 2.2 g into the final dough
Why so little in the old dough
old dough matures overnight and already contains salt, so it needs only a micro-dose of yeast
Brand the author uses
Lux (Voronezh) fresh or Ayrek (homemade)
Alternatives
any fresh yeast in a 100 g pack

Conditions and equipment

Conditions

Dough type
lean wheat dough on a salted old dough (pate fermentee), 68% hydration, no butter, sugar, or milk
Focus
overall baker's percentages, salt living inside the preferment, batard shaping, and maturity diagnostics
Doneness criterion
crust well colored, score opened, internal temperature 96–98 °C, crumb neither raw nor rubbery

Equipment

Old dough
a small 500–700 ml container with a lid; a level mark is useful
Mix
Kenwood KVC85.004SI with the dough hook: short mix on Min/1 without overheating
Shaping
scraper, minimal bench flour, banneton or cloth for a batard
Baking surface
two Estet baking stones (2 cm thick): 40×30 cm on the 2nd level from the top (top heat) and 30×25 cm on the 2nd level from the bottom; load the batard onto the lower stone (30×25) so steam from below reaches the dough. Preheat both to 250 °C
Steam
the oven's built-in steam injection — first 10 minutes
Scoring
lame/razor for one long longitudinal cut
Control
scale with tenth-of-a-gram precision, probe thermometer, timer, kitchen temperature sensor, morning state of the old dough, and description of the slice

Nutrition: how to eat this bread

Bread nutrition facts

Per 100 g of bread

237 kcal

protein 8.1 g · fat 1.1 g · carbs 47.8 g

Per slice (50 g)

119 kcal

protein 4.1 g · fat 0.6 g · carbs 23.9 g

Automatic calculation from USDA + Skurikhin database for the baked loaf after evaporation. Numbers are approximate: 1) the database covers ingredients, not finished dough; 2) bake water loss is assumed at 10% — actual loss depends on crust, time, and pan. Add 5–10% in calorie trackers if needed.

Bread is a source of starch and energy. Its nutrition depends on flour, fermentation, salt, enrichment, serving size, and the rest of the plate.

Digestion
More whole grain, fibre, and fermentation usually mean longer satiety. White flour eaten alone is generally digested faster.
Helpful or harmful
Bread is not poison or medicine by itself. Overall diet matters; current guidance prioritizes whole grains, vegetables, fruits, and pulses.
Amount
For most learning tastings, 1–2 slices, about 30–80 g, is enough depending on loaf density.
Best pairings
Pair with protein, vegetables, and moderate fat; avoid making it a large standalone portion with sweet drinks or sweet spreads.

How to eat

  • Taste the bread plain for learning, then eat it as part of a balanced plate.
  • Slice dense rye thinner; with soft white bread, make sure softness does not automatically increase the serving.

Limits

  • Wheat and rye breads contain gluten.
  • For medical conditions, adjust bread type and serving size with a clinician or dietitian.
Sources

Instructions

  1. Mix the old dough

    Mix 120 g flour, 78 g water, 2.4 g salt, and 0.3 g fresh yeast, cover, and leave overnight.

  2. Build the final dough

    Tear the old dough, mix with 280 g of flour and 174 g of water, then rest 20 minutes.

  3. Add yeast and salt

    Add 2.2 g of yeast with 20 g of water, then 5.6 g of salt, and finish a short mix to smoothness.

  4. Bulk ferment

    Run about 2 hours with 1–2 gentle folds, tracking the speed-up from old dough.

  5. Shape the batard

    Preshape, rest 15 minutes, shape a batard, and proof 45–60 minutes.

  6. Score and bake

    Make one longitudinal score and bake 10 minutes at 250 °C with steam, then 18–22 minutes at 220 °C dry to 96–98 °C internal.

A compact step map; notes and comments live in the worksheet.

S1-C7: bake sheet for a batard on old dough

Evening old dough and daytime bake: learn to compute salt and water inside the old dough, fold the mature mass into the final mix, shape a batard, and evaluate flavor without new flour.

Schedule mode

Pick a starting style.

  1. Day 1, 20:30–20:35

    Old dough

    Mix 120 g flour, 78 g water, 2.4 g salt, and 0.3 g fresh yeast into a small dense dough with no dry flour. Cover and leave at room temperature.

    Step ingredients

    • MukaMuka 13.5% flour 120 g
    • Water 78 g
    • Salt 2.4 g
    • Fresh yeast 0.3 g
    Target
    Small dough gathered, no salt or yeast left on the walls, start time recorded.
    Check
    This is not a poolish or a biga: the salt is already inside, so tomorrow it must be subtracted from the final dough.
    Evidence
    Start time, kitchen temperature, density and surface state.

  2. Day 1–2, 20:35–08:30

    Old-dough maturation

    Leave the old dough until morning. By the final mix it should become porous, plastic, with a bread smell and no sharp alcohol note.

    Step ingredients

    • Old dough all of it: 120 g flour + 78 g water + salt + yeast
    Target
    Porous, alive, slightly domed or only just starting to collapse old dough.
    Check
    If the mass dropped sharply, smells of alcohol, and tears in wet strings, record overmaturity and expect a weaker structure.
    Evidence
    Smell, time of readiness.

    11 h 55 min timer for this step

  3. Day 2, 08:30–08:38

    Initial final mix

    Tear the old dough into pieces. In the Kenwood bowl combine the old dough, 280 g of flour, and 174 g of water on Min until no dry flour remains.

    Step ingredients

    • Old dough all
    • MukaMuka 13.5% flour 280 g
    • Water 174 g out of the final 194 g
    Target
    Flour hydrated, pieces of old dough started to disperse, dough rough but cohesive.
    Check
    Do not add salt now: part of the salt is already in the old dough; the remaining 5.6 g goes in after the rest.
    Evidence
    State after hydration, visible pieces of old dough, temperature.

  4. Day 2, 08:38–08:58

    Hydration rest

    Cover the bowl and leave the dough for 20 minutes.

    Step ingredients

    • Dough without final salt and yeast all of it
    Target
    Dough is more cohesive, old dough folds in more softly.
    Check
    The rest reduces the risk of a long mix and overheating.
    Evidence
    Change in consistency after the rest.

    20 min timer for this step

  5. Day 2, 08:58–09:05

    Salt, yeast, and final mix

    Dissolve 2.2 g of fresh yeast in 20 g of water, add to the dough, and mix in for 30–60 seconds. Add 5.6 g of salt and mix on Kenwood Min/1 for about 4–5 minutes.

    Step ingredients

    • Fresh yeast 2.2 g
    • Water 20 g out of the final 194 g
    • Salt 5.6 g
    • Dough after rest all of it
    Target
    Dough smooth, elastic, old dough distributed with no dense lumps; dough temperature after mixing 24–25 °C.
    Check
    Do not forget: total salt is already 8 g, because 2.4 g were in the old dough.
    Evidence
    Dough temperature, smoothness, presence or absence of old-dough lumps.

  6. Day 2, 09:05

    Bulk fermentation start

    Transfer the dough to a lightly oiled container, round with a scraper, and cover.

    Step ingredients

    • Dough about 683 g
    Target
    Dough gathered, starting level and temperature recorded.
    Check
    Old dough speeds up the final fermentation: check earlier if the kitchen is warm.
    Evidence
    Dough and kitchen temperature, starting level.

  7. Day 2, 09:50

    Fold 1

    Make a gentle fold in the container without squeezing out gas.

    Step ingredients

    • Dough after 45 minutes of bulk all of it
    Target
    Dough has grown taller and is more gathered, surface does not tear.
    Check
    If the dough is already tight, do only a light edge pull.
    Evidence
    State before and after the fold.

  8. Day 2, 10:35

    Fold 2

    Repeat a gentle fold if the dough is spreading. If it holds an edge, limit yourself to a careful pull.

    Step ingredients

    • Dough after the first fold all of it
    Target
    Dough holds shape better, bubbles preserved.
    Check
    Do not turn the fold into a new mix: the flavor of old dough will not save the crumb if gas is pressed out by hand.
    Evidence
    Gas, strength, extensibility.

  9. Day 2, 11:05–11:20

    Preheat and preshape

    Turn the oven on to 250 °C with both baking stones (upper 40×30 and lower 30×25). Turn out the dough, gently preshape into a short oval, and cover.

    Step ingredients

    • Dough after bulk all of it
    • Bench flour minimal, not part of the formula
    Target
    One piece with preserved gas and light tension.
    Check
    If the dough looks weak, do not pack it down by force; record old-dough maturity and bulk length.
    Evidence
    Bulk state, piece mass, preheat start.

  10. Day 2, 11:20–11:35

    Rest after preshape

    Give the piece 15 minutes of rest under plastic or a bowl.

    Step ingredients

    • Preshaped piece 1 piece
    Target
    Dough has relaxed and is ready to be shaped without tearing.
    Check
    If the piece resists, give it another 5 minutes.
    Evidence
    Extensibility after rest.

  11. Day 2, 11:35–11:45

    Final shape

    Shape a batard: lightly flatten, fold the upper third to the center, seal, draw in the side edges, roll toward yourself, pinch the seam, and place in the basket seam up.

    Step ingredients

    • Rested piece 1 piece
    • Basket or cloth 1 piece, well dusted
    Target
    Even batard with a taut surface, no rough degassing.
    Check
    Tension should hold shape but not tear the surface.
    Evidence
    Length, tension, seam quality.

  12. Day 2, 11:45–12:35

    Final proof

    Proof 45–60 minutes. The piece should feel lighter, the indentation returns slowly, the surface still holds tension.

    Step ingredients

    • Shaped batard 1 piece
    Target
    Ready for scoring and opening in the oven without spreading.
    Check
    If the old dough was very mature, the proof may end earlier.
    Evidence
    Poke test, lightness, geometry.

    50 min timer for this step

  13. Day 2, 12:35–13:05

    Score and bake

    Turn the piece seam down, make one long longitudinal score 5–8 mm deep. Load onto the lower stone (30×25), turn on the oven's built-in steam, and bake at 250 °C for 10 minutes, then turn off steam, drop to 220 °C, and bake dry for another 18–22 minutes to color and 96–98 °C internal.

    Step ingredients

    • Proofed batard 1 piece
    • Steam water for steam, not part of the formula
    Target
    Score opened, crust golden-brown, bread baked through.
    Check
    If the score did not open, first work through proof, tension, and steam rather than changing the old dough.
    Evidence
    Loading time, steam mode, internal temperature, crust color.

    30 min timer for this step

  14. Day 2, 13:05–14:05

    Cool, slice, and taste

    Cool at least 60 minutes. Slice and evaluate old-dough aroma, crust, chew, salt, and the difference from S1-C2/S1-C5.

    Step ingredients

    • Finished batard 1 piece
    • New ingredients none added
    Target
    Understand whether old dough gave maturity without an alcoholic or oversalted profile.
    Check
    Do not slice hot: old-dough flavor and crumb are evaluated more correctly after stabilization.
    Evidence
    Mass after baking, weight loss, tasting note.

    1 h timer for this step

Version history

  • v1.0May 23, 2026in development
    Problem
    After poolish in S1-C5 and biga in S1-C6, the course needed a lesson on the third yeasted preferment without introducing butter or sourdough.
    Change
    Created S1-C7: batard on old dough, 68% water, 30% of the flour preferred in the old dough, overall baker's percentages, separate control of salt in the preferment, and a working sheet for an evening start.
    Result
    The lesson tests old-dough maturity, overall formula math, inclusion of old dough in the mix, batard shaping, and flavor without new flour.
    Conclusion
    S1-C7 should close out yeasted preferments before moving to a sourdough opara and sourdough acidity.