Never really got the hang of pâte fermentée (the addition of a proportion of mature dough to a new dough). If a recipe calls for it I put it in but without really thinking it through. Is it to add flavour to a commercially yeasted dough or a hang over from when old dough was used as a leaven for the next batch? If you’re making sourdough with an overall fermentation period in excess of twelve hours I can’t really seeing it adding much to the flavour.
Anyway, I’ve been messing about in the bakery again. I thought I’d I’d have a go at combining a wholemeal and a white dough. So in the morning I mixed 480g wholemeal dough (i.e. enough to make a 400g loaf) and let it ferment until the evening when I mixed it in with a campagne dough to an overall weight of 2150g – the dough weight for a 2k loaf. This is easy to do if you use spreadsheet calculators; just change the dough weight from 2150g to 1670g (2150 – 480) and all the little figures change before your very eyes. (You see, you really are going to need to invest in Bethesdabakers Breadsheets when I finally get it finished – days not months)
Fermented the dough in the fridge overnight, shaped and proved for 3.5 hours in the morning, 65 minutes at 210C.
Quite a big volume for a small crumb. Quite like a wholemeal crumb but less crumbly. Cut it this morning (day after baking). Nice and moist, good but not assertive flavour. See how this develops in the next couple of days.
The PArtisan Baker 
Looking pretty damn fine to me … Likewise, I’ve used pâte fermentée when a recipe calls for it without really thinking through what it adds to the final loaf. Of course if you wanted to be proper scientific about it – get yer lab coat on, Hartley – you’d have to do a side-by-side comparison with a straight sourdough.
Btw, as for Noddy – I’ve never seen him in possession of the log book for that car. Suspect him of twocking it off Big Ears.