Old dough preferment, home milled flour

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QC
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Joined: 2014-12-11 13:30
Old dough preferment, home milled flour

Hello!  I've been exploring the site over the past month, and it's been very informational on helping me enhance my baking skills.  I have been baking bread 2-4 times per week just out of addiction lately, and am pretty comfortable creating my own formulas with the information I learned from the podcasts.  In general, I've had great success.

So two nights ago, I decided to try milling my own flour in a vitamix.  I mixed 175 grams of white spring wheat with 325 grams of hard red winter wheat, and left all the germ/bran in the flour.  The flour was pretty germy, but seemed fine enough beyond that.  I took 500 grams of this mixture, and mixed it with 300 grams of water and .08% yeast (.4 grams) to make a biga preferment.  I allowed an 18 hour fermentation at room temp ( 68-70F), then mixed in an additional 425 grams of water, 10 grams of salt, and 500 grams of flour mixed at the same ratio, except that I sifted out the germ for the bulk fermentation of the final dough.  I did throw in another pinch of yeast at that point, hoping to help the rise considering that it is a 100% whole grain loaf.  I only mixed as much as necessary to evenly distribute the biga, and then allowed bulk fermentation at 77F for 2.5 hours, performing a stretch and fold every 30 minutes.  I then took half the dough, formed a boule, bench rested, tension pulled, and placed in a cloth lined collander dusted with rice flour to proof.  It proofed faster than expected (1 hour, 20 minutes).  I transferred it to my peel, scored, and slid it onto the baking stone a little too early, because the temp was only just at 400F when I put it in, and I was afraid to wait longer for fear of overproofing.  I create steam by adding water to a preheated cast iron skillet at the first 15-20 minutes of baking.  In the end, the loaf spread laterally, rather than up, but did open on the scores about an inch or so.  Crumb is ok, but I would have preferred an upward spring.

The other half of the dough has been in my fridge for the past 18 hours, and I want to bake it tomorrow.  My question is, do you think that the gluten structure will have improved over that extra, retarded fermentation in the fridge?  I had been thinking to use that dough as a preferment itself, and add an additional 500 grams of commercial whole wheat bread flour, or mayber 250g w/w and 250 white bread flour, keeping the hydration at around 72.5%, but trying to achieve some additional strength by adding those flours.  The down side is that I will lose the flavor of that 100% fresh milled flour.  Any advice?  Further, if I do add more flour, and only bake half of the resulting dough, can I keep the dough active like that?  For example, use the same dough every couple of days to add fresh flour (fermentable sugar), and have a mother dough of sorts?  Would there be a flavor enhancement or loss from this?  Would it eventually turn itself into sourdough?  Thanks!