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The same user (a dentist and home baker from the island of Reunion) later comes to the logical conclusion that even though Polish people are known for making good bread, it's not enough to prove a Polish origin of the poolish method.

Some of the oldest French-language mentions of this supposedly Polish starter use the spellings "''poolisch''" or "''polisch''" (with "sch"), which suggests an alternative version of the above etymology. Namely, that the word comes not from English, but from German. But isn't the German word for "Polish" written as "''polnisch''", with an "N"? Yes, it is in modern Standard German; but in 19th-century southern dialects (used in Austria), the same adjective could be written without the "N", as "''polisch''", "''pohlisch''" or "''pollisch''". And some of these spellings can be found in the context of bread starters. For example, an 1865 advertisement for St. Marxer, a Viennese brand of pressed yeast, mentions a "''Polisch''" method. The word, in this sense, seems to have been largely forgotten in German with time, but even a century later a German breadmaking handbook still talked about a "''polische''" bread dough: