This free poolish preferment calculator helps you work out poolish preferment sizes as a share of total flour, with yeast and ferment time by room temperature. It runs fully in your browser, needs no account, and gives a clear answer in seconds, so you can stop guessing and start with amounts that fit your own kitchen. It is made for everyday home bakers, not for experts, and every input is explained in plain words on the tool itself.
To use it, fill in the fields above and press the button. The tool checks your numbers, runs the calculation, and shows the result right below the tool. If a number looks wrong, change it and press the button again. Nothing is saved on a server, and you can use the tool as many times as you like, for one batch or for several batches in the same week.
The tool takes the poolish flour as a percentage of the total flour, usually 20 to 40 percent, and adds the same weight of water, because a poolish is a wet preferment at 100 percent hydration. Yeast is 1 gram at normal room temperature, cut to 0.5 grams above 26 degrees so the poolish does not over-ferment, and raised to 1.5 grams below 20 degrees so it still ripens in a cool kitchen. Ferment time follows the same logic: about 14 hours at normal temperature, 10 hours when warm, and 18 hours when cool, and the poolish is ready when it is bubbly, domed, and just starting to fall back.
For example, 500 grams of total flour with a 30 percent poolish gives 150 grams of poolish flour and 150 grams of water with 1 gram of yeast, fermented for about 14 hours at 22 degrees. The same poolish at 28 degrees needs only 0.5 grams of yeast and about 10 hours, because warmth speeds every part of fermentation.
Reading the result is simple: take the headline numbers as your starting point, not as a strict rule for every batch. Flour, room temperature, oven heat and the size of your pan all change what is sensible, so adjust a little and watch how your bake turns out over two or three tries. A recipe that you enjoy and that you can repeat is worth more than a perfect number on paper.
Mix the poolish the night before baking day, cover it, and mark its level so you can see when it doubles and domes. Use it at its peak for the best flavour and oven spring, and if it has collapsed and smells sharply sour, feed it with a little fresh flour and water and wait for a second rise.
A common mistake is changing everything at once when a bake disappoints you. Change one thing, keep it for the next bake, and compare the result with the bake before, because slow steady change is how baking improves and how you learn what your oven really does. If a dough feels far too wet or far too dry, check your weighing first, since a measuring cup error is the most common cause of a failed dough.
Over the next few weeks, use this poolish preferment calculator again and again, and keep a short note of the result each time. A single bake can mislead you, because a cold kitchen, a new bag of flour, or a different pan can change any number, but a pattern over three or four bakes tells the truth. Look for slow improvement, celebrate small wins, and keep the routine the same long enough to learn it well. If progress stops, change only one part of the plan, such as the water, the bake time, or the pan size, and then watch again. Consistency matters too, because the same recipe made the same way every time is the only fair way to judge a change, and this tool gives you that steady starting point every time.
This tool is educational only and does not replace advice from a professional baker. Use it to build a sensible routine, keep notes on what works in your kitchen, and enjoy the process. Try it with your own numbers now, and come back whenever your batch size, pan, or kitchen temperature changes, because the right amounts change as your baking grows.
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