In a comment to one of my bread recipes the preferment livito madre was described, with a link to the Brotbackforum. The description sounded fascinating and I always love to make Sourdoughs, and so I mixed Flour, water, honey and oil and observed what would happen.
After 24 hours, the dough rise highly and doubled its volumen. After 48 hours I feed it again and now it rose even faster, doubling its volumen in 12 hours, after 36 hours it nearly tripled. I feed the livito madre once again and placed it in the fridge for 5 days as the recipe suggested.
In the fridge it showed nearly no activity, but the ovenspring of the rolls I baked with this sourdough (using it right out of the fridge) was amazing. Their taste was mild and complex, not as tangy as with my normal sourdough. The lievito madre itself do not taste as normal sourdough as well. Its taste is fruitlike, with hints of yeast and it smells lightly after fresh yoghurt. It seems, that the lievito madre contains another mixture of bacteria and yeasts due to firm dough and the honey which was added in the beginning.