Changes

Centuries later, once microscopes were around, the bubbles that cause the dough to rise were shown to be produced by microörganisms. Oversimplifying, there are two kinds of them. One kind is lactic-acid bacteria, which eat the sugars present in the flour, excreting carbon dioxide and lactic acid. Bacteria like these are also responsible for milk going sour (hence their name: "``lactic" means "``milk", "``acid" means "``sour") and for cabbage turning into sauerkraut. In bread, pockets of the carbon dioxide are trapped in the dough, making the crumb porous and fluffy, while the lactic acid gives the bread its specific tart flavour. And yes, the dough which is left for bacteria to make it sour is called sourdough.

A method, therefore, was needed to somehow rejuvenate this old yeast. And this is why pre-ferments were invented. The idea is to effect preliminary fermentation and let new generations of yeast cells to bud out from the old ones. Only then comes the second phase of fermentation whose purpose is to rise the dough with the young population of yeast. Pre-ferments come in several kinds, such as the Italian ''biga'' (used in production of ciabattas) or the English sponge (used in making hamburger buns). But what we’re interested in is the highly-hydrated pre-ferment, in which flour and water are mixed in equal proportion by weight, producing a loose starter similar in its consistency to pancake batter. This method is mostly used in preparing the dough for baguettes and other typically French rolls. And this is the method which is known by the word "``poolish". Phew!

Seems legit, doesn’t it? After all, Marie Antoinette, an Austrian-born queen of France, is famous for her expertise in baked goods and for her piece of advice that those who can’t afford bread should eat cake instead. Right? Well, not really, as it turns out. Firstly, the way this quotation is commonly rendered into English is quite loose, because what Marie Antoinette actually talked about was not cake, but brioche (''"``qu’ils mangent de la brioche"''), a sweet bun made from dough rich in eggs and butter. The cake version must have spread in the English language before the brioche became popular in the English-speaking world.

As a keen observer, Zang noticed visiting French people raving about Viennese bread. Whenever he was in Paris, he could see for himself that French bread – dark, heavy and sour – was nothing like what was available back in Vienna. There was an obvious niche on the French baking market and Zang resolved to enter this niche with a little capital. In 1837 he moved to Paris, where he and his business partner, Ernest Schwarzer, opened a new bakery at 92, rue de Richelieu. Do you need to know anything about baking bread to run a successful bakery? Not necessarily, as Zang and Schwarzer promptly demonstrated; all you need is to hire good Viennese bakers, trust that they know what they’re doing and have the guts to invest in the technological innovations these bakers recommend. In the meantime, the owners focused on marketing; after all, if you’re investing in technological novelties, your customers should be made aware of that. And so, Zang’s patrons (Schwarzer sold his share to Zang in 1839) soon learned that the dough for Zang’s bread was kneaded not by a sweaty half-naked baker, but by a modern, hygienic machine, and that the loaves were baked in a special steam oven which gave the finished product an appetisingly shiny crust. Parisians were quick to learn about the advantages of "``Viennese" baked goods, which owed their highly-prised aroma, lightness, whiteness and freshness to a combination of good Hungarian wheat flour and baker’s yeast (free from the hoppy bitterness of brewer’s yeast).

Zang’s establishment was known as ''Boulangerie Viennoise'', or "``Viennese Bakery". True to its name, it offered Austrian breadstuffs that had been hitherto unknown in Paris, such as ''[[What Has the Battle of Vienna Given Us?#Croissants|Kipferl]]'', or Viennese crescent rolls (dubbed "''``croissants"''" by the French), and ''Kaisersemmel'', or kaiser rolls (which Parisians referred to simply as "''``petits pains viennois"''", or "``little Viennese breads"). Zang’s commercial success was quickly copied by local bakers, so that by 1840 a dozen shops offering "``Viennese" breads had sprung up across Paris.

All the while, Viennese bread in France kept evolving. By the early 20th century, the word "''``viennoiserie"''" (literally, "``Viennese stuff") had been coined in French in the sense of "``luxury Viennese-type breads". But at the same time, these "``Viennese" breads were becoming increasingly more French than Austrian. Supposedly Viennese croissants were now made with French puff pastry rather than traditional yeast dough. The latter did survive, however, in a new kind of bread rolls which only became common in the 1920s. These rolls were long and thin, white and sweetish (which made them attractive to consumers), but were very quick to go stale, so you had to buy them 2–3 times a day (which made them attractive to bakery owners). Due to their distinctive baton-like shape, they became known as "``baguettes", or "``little sticks". And this is how French baking as we know it today came to be. By that time, poolish had been in common use in France, especially for the production of baguettes. But this was already long after Zang’s death and even longer after he had divested himself of his Parisian bakery. Which means it probably isn’t him who should get the credit for introducing poolish to France.

We know by now that while Prof. Calvel was a&nbsp;great authority on baking bread, he was not infallible, especially in matters of history. Besides, it seems he must have repeated the story about "``Baron" Zang "``from Poland" after someone else, as the same information had already appeared in ''The Atlantic Monthly'' in 1972.<ref>{{Cyt

}}</ref> Is it possible, then, that he was wrong not only about Zang being Polish, but also about the Polish origin of the poolish method? Let’s take a&nbsp;closer look at the word itself: the spelling looks neither Polish nor German, nor French. If it looks like anything, it’s English – but weird English, like the word "``Polish", but written with a&nbsp;double "``O" for whatever reason.

I’ve examined a&nbsp;variety of ancient sources while looking for a&nbsp;possible etymology of the word "``poolish", from 19th-century grain exchange reports to early-21st-century online message boards for bakers. It turns out there’s a&nbsp;number of hypotheses, none of them convincing.

The explanation which is most common (thanks to uncritical repetition) links "``poolish" with the English word "``Polish". Some sources say that "``Poolish" is an old alternative spelling of the same adjective, but I haven’t been able to find a&nbsp;dictionary that would confirm that. Yet, even if it were true, it only helps muddle the matter more than to elucidate it; why would the French call a&nbsp;Polish method they learned from the Austrians by an archaic English word? You can sense the frustration with how little sense it all makes in this post by Mr Thierry Martin in the French baking forum BoulangerieNet:

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&nbsp;Viennese brand of pressed yeast, mentions a&nbsp;"''``Polisch"''" method. The word, in this sense, seems to have been largely forgotten in German with time, but even a&nbsp;century later a&nbsp;German bread-making handbook still talked about a&nbsp;"''``polische"''" bread dough:

But this is still no proof for the method having been developed in Poland. Dr. Matthew Baerman, in his article for the linguistic blog ''Morph'', suggests that the name may have come from a&nbsp;mental association made between the loose starter and the famous Polish fermented-rye-meal soup called "''``żur"''" (pronounced: {{pron|zhooR}}) or "''``żurek"''" ({{pron|zhoo|Rek}}) – even though the soup is made from diluted sourdough rather than a&nbsp;yeast starter.<ref> {{Cyt

}}</ref> In fact, some German sources use the name "''``polnische Suppe"''" ("``Polish soup") for the loose yeast pre-ferment.<ref> {{Cyt

}}</ref> What Dr. Baerman may have been unaware of is that the word "''``żurek"''" also has a&nbsp;special meaning in Polish baking terminology, where it refers to a&nbsp;loose sourdough starter. But this is a&nbsp;kind of starter Polish bakers use for making ''chleb'' (pronounced: {{pron|Hlep}}), a&nbsp;sourdough rye bread, rather than for white yeast rolls. Mixed rye-wheat ''chleb'' is also common in Poland, but even then you would prepare a&nbsp;rye sourdough starter and a&nbsp;wheat yeast pre-ferment separately.<ref>{{Cyt

Whatever the case, Dr. Baerman admits that "``this theory has the minor drawback of lacking any positive evidence in its favor."

But there’s still more confusion to come. Some of the oldest texts about poolish use a&nbsp;different, much more French-looking, spelling: "''``pouliche"''". And it’s not only French-language sources that do it; "''``pouliche"''" appears for example in an article about French bakeries which was published in an American millers’ magazine in 1897,<ref>{{Cyt

The trouble is that in French the word "''``pouliche"''" has a&nbsp;meaning which is completely unrelated to baking; it means "``filly". What could a&nbsp;young female horse have to do with a&nbsp;yeast starter? Perhaps someone associated a&nbsp;pre-ferment, whose purpose is to rejuvenate a&nbsp;yeast population, with a&nbsp;young equine? Or maybe fermenting and bubbling dough reminded someone of a&nbsp;prancing filly? We can only guess. In any case, this the etymology that Jim Chevalier is leaning to. In his opinion, the pseudo-English phonetic spelling "``poolish" appeared after the original "''``pouliche"''", and it was only then that its similarity to the English word "``Polish" gave rise to the story about the method’s Polish origin. And to make this story more believable, someone decided to explain the Polish-French connection by adding the famous August Zang as a&nbsp;missing link.

I’ve found an even more surprising hypothesis, which proposes that the work "``poolish" comes from "''``polish"''" (פאליש), which is a&nbsp;Yiddish word for a&nbsp;synagogue antechamber. The idea here is that a&nbsp;pre-ferment is the first step towards a&nbsp;finished bread, just like the antechamber is the first step towards the synagogue. In the central (Polish-Galician) dialect of Yiddish, the vowel "``o" is closer to the "``oo" sound, which would explain the "``poolish" spelling in English transcription, as well as indicate a&nbsp;Polish origin of the method. Except that, in this case, the authorship of this method would belong not to Poles in general, but specifically to Polish Jews.

Prof. David Gold, who suggested this possibility, admits that it "``sounds farfetched".<ref>{{Cyt

[[File:Polisch Odessa.png|thumb|upright=1.5|"``Polish Odessa" (or "``Polisch Odessa") in 19th-century British, French, Belgian and German press]]

When looking for the oldest possible anchor points, I discovered that west European press, starting in the first half of the 19th century, often used the phrase "``Polish Odessa" (also spelled "``Polisch Odessa"), which is quite surprising when you consider that Odessa was never a&nbsp;Polish city. It turns out, however, that this was the name used for the wheat imported from what is now western Ukraine.

No wonder that even in France the wheat from Poland was known under the English trade name of "``Polish". But the French have always been very creative in butchering the words they loaned from English (mind you, the French word for "``shampoo" is "''``shampooing"''" and the French for "``walkie-talkie" is "''``talkie-walkie"''"), so it shouldn’t come as a&nbsp;surprise that they would write the English word "``Polish" as "''``Polisch"''" or even "''``Poolish"''".

And now it’s time for my own proposition: the poolish method was developed in France, but it gave the best results with the "``nervous" Polish wheat, which was known in France as "``Poolish" (among other misspellings) and lent its name to the method. Only once the name "``poolish" had caught on, along with the pseudo-English pronunciation to match the butchered spelling, was the French phonetic spelling "''``pouliche"''" (which also happens to be the French word for "``filly") coined.