Do You Actually Need Poolish for Pizza Dough?
I used to make poolish all the time. And every time, I'd ask myself the same question: why am I doing this twice?
You mix the poolish the night before, flour, water, a pinch of yeast. Let it bubble overnight. Then the next morning you're back in the kitchen, making a second mess, adding the rest of the flour, water, and finally the salt. Two days. Two mixing sessions. Two cleanups. And then you still have to ferment the final dough before you can bake.
I get it. Poolish has a legendary reputation. Serious bakers swear by it. And it does work, I'm not here to say it doesn't. But every time I go through that process I think: there's a simpler way to get there. A better way, actually.
The Math Doesn't Add Up
Here's what bothers me most about poolish. You're only fermenting a portion of your dough, usually 30 to 50 percent of the flour, overnight. The rest of the flour? It goes in fresh the next day. Young. Unfermented. No time to develop.
So you end up with a dough that's part old, part new. The poolish brings some flavor. The fresh flour brings almost none. You're essentially averaging out the fermentation across the whole batch, and the young flour drags everything down.
And there's no salt in a poolish. Salt is a flavor amplifier. You're fermenting half your flour with zero salt, then adding it all at once at the end.
Meanwhile my approach: every gram of flour, every drop of water, all the salt, fermenting together for 72 hours. Nothing is young. Nothing is underdeveloped. The whole dough transforms together.
Let's Run the Math on Your Time
Here's where it really falls apart. There are only two ways this plays out, and neither one makes sense.
Scenario 1: You make your poolish overnight, mix your final dough the next morning, and bake same day. The poolish got 12–16 hours of fermentation. The rest of your flour? A few hours at best. You baked with a dough that was half young, half developed. Partial fermentation. Partial flavor. Two messes.
Scenario 2: You make your poolish overnight, mix your final dough the next morning, then cold ferment the final dough for another 24–72 hours before baking. Now you're 3–4 days in. Two mixing sessions. Two cleanups. And you waited just as long as our method anyway.
Either way you lose. In Scenario 1 you shortchanged the fermentation. In Scenario 2 you did everything twice and waited just as long for the same result.
One mix. One mess. 72 hours. That's it.
What Long Fermentation Actually Does
Let's start with the thing nobody talks about: digestion. 72 hours of fermentation works on the dough progressively across the entire batch, every gram of flour, every drop of water, with enzymes doing the work that only time allows. A lot of people find the result easier on the stomach. Lighter. Less of that heavy, brick-in-the-stomach feeling after a few slices.
That alone is reason enough for me to never go back.
And the flavor? It's a micro nuance, hard to describe in words. A depth that builds slowly as you chew. Not sour, not yeasty — just more. More complexity, more character, more life in every bite. It's a bonus on top of a dough that already feels better to eat.
One Mess. One Mix. Three Days.
My process: combine all the flour, water, salt, and yeast in one bowl. Knead until combined. Cover and refrigerate. Come back in 24, 48, or 72 hours. That's it.
One mess. One cleanup. And a dough that's been slowly transforming the entire time, every gram of flour working together, building flavor and extensibility you simply can't rush.
When it comes out of the fridge it's soft, pillowy, alive. It stretches without fighting you. It blisters in the oven. It tastes like it took real effort, because time did the work so you didn't have to.
Prove me wrong. I'm open to it. But until then, I'm mixing once, cleaning once, and letting time do the rest.
One Mix vs. Two — The Full Picture
| Poolish Method | 72-Hour Dough | |
|---|---|---|
| Mixing sessions | 2 | 1 |
| Cleanups | 2 | 1 |
| Flour fermented | 30–50% | 100% |
| Salt during ferment | ✗ | ✓ |
| Active time | 2 days | 5 minutes |
| Easier to digest (many report) | ? | ✓ |
| Result | Great | Great |
We Put Everything Into the Bag
This is exactly the philosophy behind our 72-Hour Pizza Dough Mix. We took our own recipe, Central Milling organic flour, perfectly measured, and made it even simpler. No scale. No measuring. Just open the bag, add water, and let it ferment for 72 hours.
No poolish. No preferment. No second mess the next morning.
Just one mix, one ferment, and the best pizza dough you've ever made at home. Everything that makes our dough special is already inside the bag. All you add is water and time.
That's the whole idea. Remove every barrier between you and incredible pizza.
Have you ever made a poolish and wondered if it was worth the extra step? Try the 72-hour method once and tell me what you think.
About the Author
Andris Lagsdin
I invented the Baking Steel in 2012 after reading a single paragraph in the Wall Street Journal about Modernist Cuisine. I was standing in my family's steel fabrication plant in Hanover, MA and thought: steel conducts heat 18X better than ceramic. What would that do to a pizza?
Twelve years later I'm still in the kitchen, still obsessing over dough, and still convinced that the best results come from removing complexity, not adding it.
One mix. One mess. Just add time.
