Word.ws English Dictionary

poolish

/puːlɪʃ/US/pulɪʃ/

poolish noun: a mixture of flour and water with a little yeast; used to make some forms of dough.

poolish: a mixture of flour and water with a little yeast; used to make some forms of dough
Image: F5ZV, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

poolish (countable and uncountable, plural poolishes)

  1. A mixture of flour and water with a little yeast; used to make some forms of dough.
    • In order to ensure a lower acidity, the ideal time to add the poolish to the dough is when it has matured. At this point it will have domed slightly and will be just beginning to deflate. A long poolish produces more interesting aromas and requires […]2003, Rose Levy Beranbaum, The Bread Bible, W. W. Norton & Company, →ISBN, page 35

Synonyms of poolish

Forms of poolish

pluralpoolishes

Origin of poolish

Compare Polish and French pouliche.

Questions about poolish

What does poolish mean?
Poolish means a mixture of flour and water with a little yeast; used to make some forms of dough.
What part of speech is poolish?
Poolish is a noun.
How do you pronounce poolish?
Poolish is pronounced /puːlɪʃ/ (UK).
What is the plural of poolish?
The plural of poolish is poolishes.

Words near poolish in the dictionary

  1. poolhouses
  2. Poolie
  3. Poolies
  4. pooling
  5. poolings
  6. poolish
  7. poolishes
  8. poolless
  9. poolout
  10. poolouts
  11. poolplexing

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: poolish (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-poolish.wav.

Cite this entry: “poolish.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/poolish. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.