White bread with poolish from Flour Water Salt Yeast: The Fundamentals of Artisan Bread and Pizza by Ken Forkish

Ingredients

instant yeast
Instant yeast appears similar to active dry yeast, but has smaller granules with substantially higher percentages of live cells per comparable unit volumes. It is more perishable than active dry yeast, but also does not require rehydration, and can usually be added directly to all but the driest doughs. Instant yeast generally has a small amount of ascorbic acid added as a preservative. (Wikipedia) Buy Now
- King Arthur Baking - United States
unbleached white flour

Where’s the full recipe - why can I only see the ingredients?

Always check the publication for a full list of ingredients. An Eat Your Books index lists the main ingredients and does not include 'store-cupboard ingredients' (salt, pepper, oil, flour, etc.) - unless called for in significant quantity.

Notes about this recipe

christineakiyoshi on March 25, 2025

This is an easy recipe to follow. I used half for bread that was very moist inside in a good way. The other half, I separated into 4 portions for pizza. When baked it had a lot of small bubbles and was nicely risen. The dough is wet but this works well. 5 stars
Jviney on February 07, 2025

This is, for me, a wonderful alternative to sourdough. I don’t have to feed starter daily but can still get the depth of flavor from the poolish. Love that it makes two loaves.
JuneHawk on April 30, 2022

I've had much more success with this recipe than with either the Saturday White Bread or the Overnight White bread.
anya_sf on January 24, 2021

Similar to the overnight white bread, but better flavor. Baked for the same amount of time (30 min covered, 20 uncovered), this one got crustier to the point of tasting almost burnt in a few spots, but those were easy to cut away. Lovely open, irregular, chewy crumb.
twoyolks on February 21, 2019

I had good luck with this bread. It has a nicely developed flavor from the poolish. I got a good crust on my bread. The crumb is somewhat tight but still in a good way. I give a slight edge to the White bread with biga in the book merely because of a looser crumb.
Rutabaga on January 22, 2017

I made this again, this time weighing the ingredients. It is indeed a wet and sticky dough, but the flavor is excellent. Oddly, the crust on my second loaf (I have to bake them one at a time) wasn't as firm as it usually is, but the texture of the crumb was still good, so this didn't really bother me. I added 3-4 tablespoons of chopped rosemary and sprinkled the top with Maldon sea salt - delicious!
Rutabaga on December 05, 2016

I thought this bread was the best of the three I've made so far from Forkish's book. My only complaint was that it needed a bit more salt, but that could have been due to the kosher salt I was using. Since I haven't yet replaced the battery in my scale, I had to use Imperial measurements, so I chose to deliberately go lightly on the flour, then add more as needed when doing the final mixing to get the kind of consistency shown in the book. This technique seems to work pretty well for me. The loaves were airy and light, and the crumb even had a little sheen to it, just like Forkish mentions is a sign of a good bread! I can see how this would be a great dough for baguettes, and look forward to experimenting with it.
Katti on January 22, 2013

Didn't quite live up to expectations, and the dough was very wet and hard to work with. I will try it once more in case I've made a mistake somewhere.