Guide · Preferments

Biga and poolish

Two preferments, two characters. More aroma and structure, in exchange for one more step.

By the Pizza Call · Updated July 23, 2026

A preferment is a dough you build the day before from a slice of the flour, some water and a touch of yeast, then leave to ferment on its own. When it's ready you mix it into the rest. It buys you more aroma, because the long ferment develops smells a fast dough never gets, and often more lightness. In exchange it asks for one more step and a timing window you have to respect.

Biga vs poolish: the difference in one line

The whole difference is water: biga is stiff, poolish is liquid, and everything else follows from that. Biga, cool and barely hydrated, matures slowly and hands you a sturdy gluten network; poolish, wet, ferments more lively and leaves the dough soft and extensible.

Biga: stiff, around 45%

Biga is the preferment of the Italian tradition. Flour, water at 44-45%, and about 1% fresh yeast, mixed roughly: not a smooth dough but a shaggy, barely-bound mass. It rests around 16 to 24 hours at 18 °C (65 °F), somewhere cool, and in those hours it builds strength and scent. Those figures are Piergiorgio Giorilli's, and they're the ones Italian pizzaioli work to.

One thing to know if you read in English: 44-45% is the Italian pizza convention, not a universal definition. Hamelman, Suas and the American Society of Baking all put biga at 50-60% water, and Ooni's recipes run 60-70%. Same word, wetter dough, different behaviour. On this site, biga means the stiff Italian one.

Quantities for a biga on 500 g of flour:

• Strong flour (W 280 or more): 500 g
• Cold water: 220 g (44%)
• Fresh yeast: 5 g (1%)

Mix until the flour is just dampened, cover, and wait. A ripe biga has roughly doubled and smells sweet and alcoholic with a yogurt note under it, hazelnut and fruit on a good day, never solvent or vinegar. It shouldn't be stringy when you pull it apart, and it shouldn't fizz. Unlike a poolish it doesn't dome and then dip, so don't stand there waiting for a signal that never comes: go by time, temperature and smell. Then you dissolve it into the remaining water with the salt, add any leftover flour, and knead to full gluten development.

You'll see 48-hour bigas quoted, and they're real, but they're a different formula rather than the same one left longer. They need a cold leg and much less yeast, something like 0.3-0.7% with 24 hours at 4 °C (40 °F) followed by 24 at 20 °C. Run 1% yeast at room temperature for two days and what you'll unwrap is already spent.

Biga wants a strong flour, because it has to survive hours of fermentation at low hydration without breaking down; the W guide comes in handy here. In return it gives you a tenacious dough, a dry and airy crumb, and that toasted-wheat taste behind the puffy canotto rim of the modern Neapolitan pizzerias. Canotto means dinghy, which tells you how inflated a rim we're talking about.

Poolish: liquid, at 100%

Poolish comes from French baking, and the name is usually traced to the Polish bakers who carried the method across Europe. Nice story, though it's tradition rather than documented fact. The formula is the part that matters: equal weights of flour and water, plus a pinch of yeast dosed to the hours you have.

Quantities for a poolish on 300 g of flour:

• Flour: 300 g
• Water at room temperature: 300 g (100%)
• Fresh yeast: by the clock, from 4.5 g for a four-hour poolish down to 0.3 g for one you leave overnight

That last line is the one people get wrong, so here it is in full. The percentages are fresh yeast on the poolish's own flour, with the room at about 20 °C (68 °F):

Figures for fresh yeast at about 20 °C, poolish at 100% hydration (published tables from Molino Moras). Using instant dry instead? Divide by three, or you'll triple the dose without meaning to. Warmer room, less yeast; cooler room, a little more.

Whisk flour, water and yeast to a smooth batter, cover, and let it ferment. Poolish has one big advantage: you can read it by eye. It's ready when the surface is domed with bubbles and just beginning to dip in the centre. From there you add the remaining flour, the water and the salt, and finish the dough. Next to biga, poolish makes the dough more extensible and soft, with a lactic aroma and a lighter crust.

Biga or poolish: what changes on the plate

Choose by what you're after.

• Biga gives strength, structure and a dry, irregular crumb, with a bold wheaty aroma. It's more forgiving and rarely turns sour, but you can only read it by time and temperature, not by eye. Perfect for confident Neapolitans and doughs that have to hold their shape.
• Poolish gives extensibility, a softer and lighter crumb and a pleasant tangy note. It's easy to read and quick to set up, but being wet it forgives less: forget it and it sours. Excellent for hydrated styles, from the teglia to the pala.

With biga you usually preferment a large share of the flour, 50 to 70%; with poolish a smaller one, 20 to 40%. The rest goes in at the final mix.

When they are actually worth it (and when not)

Let's be honest: for a home napoletana a good direct dough, maybe with a long cold rise, is already excellent. You don't need a preferment to make a great pizza. Biga and poolish add fragrance, a more complex crumb and a lighter chew, but also a step, a second timing window, and a fresh way to fail: an over-ripe preferment ruins the whole batch, not part of it.

They earn their place when you already have direct dough down and want more aroma, when you work high hydrations (teglia, pala, canotto) where extensibility and structure count, or when you enjoy the process. They aren't worth it if you're starting out, if you want reliability, or if your direct dough already makes you happy.

The most common mistakes

• Biga with weak flour. Low hydration over long hours will collapse a feeble flour. A W 280 does the job routinely, and plenty of pizzerias go no higher; below that, think twice.
• A forgotten preferment. A few hours too many and the poolish sours, the biga smells of alcohol. Note the start time.
• Too much yeast in the preferment. It races, matures too fast, and eats the very aroma you were after. A preferment wants little yeast and time.
• Dosing a poolish like a biga. The 1% that suits a biga will blow through a poolish in four hours. Read the dose off the clock, and remember the table is fresh yeast.
• Not recalculating the final yeast. The preferment already brings active yeast into the dough: a direct dough would need more, but with biga or poolish you start ahead.

Frequently asked questions