The method for Levain in the two books is different. I wish I had checked out the pizza book levain instructions first. Instead of 500 grams of flour a day it uses 100 grams. Today is day 6 of my starter, which I've maintained according to the bread book. I took out 50 grams of it this morning and put it in a 1 quart tub and added flour and water according to the pizza book method and my plan was to follow the bread book feeding with the rest of the starter for today, and hope that I could convert it to the pizza book method tomorrow. Will that work? I would 2 starters, one for bread and one for pizza. Sorry for the dumb questions.
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You are wasting a lot of un-needed flour to feed in a folkish method. I feed my levain. And it is used for anything sourdough. One levain that rules them all kind of thing. You could just do 50-50-50 or 25-25-25 every day, and if you need more, plus keep some for refrigerator, y0u just batch it up fromthe last feeding,-
I sometimes come across as not a fan of folkish. It is the book that taught me to make. Y first loaf, and several after. So, I do think the book achieves what it is intended to. But, his waste of flour, and a few other steps are such a turn off to me.Last edited by Richard Chrz; July 8, 2022, 08:22 AM. -
Richard Chrz I'm not a fan of the massive quantity of flour used either. Seems like such a waste, and it's expensive as heck. Especially with inflation where it is. -
No more then 30 grams, 30, 30 for a period of time will give you all that a large batch will, you should be able to get an active culture fed and fully powered up to 3-4 times a day if you are working with a strong starter.
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The exact amount(s) you use aren't important ... it's the ratio of the ingredients that counts. Unlike Ken Forkish, I don't need enough levain to run a bakery so I routinely scale his amounts down by half (or even less). Timings, however, remain the same.Originally posted by hoovarmin View PostComment
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hoovarmin - Forkish likes his levain to be 80% hydration ... which is more of an Italian-style "biga" ... presumably because it's closer to the hydration level for most of the breads that he bakes. I personally prefer a 100% levain (a "poolish") ... because it makes the math easier and a poolish is a bit easier to incorporate into dry ingredients.
Frankly, it really doesn't matter if you get the hydration correct for whatever you're baking.Last edited by MBMorgan; July 8, 2022, 09:24 AM. -
hoovarmin - I should add that I personally make my starter (poolish) using equal amounts of flour and water from day one and really only follow the "Forkish Method" (which I really like) for making dough and baking bread.
Also, don't think of it as "waste". Think of it as "spent fuel" ... and like any other fuel, I try to control cost by using as little as possible to get me where I'm going.
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I gotta say it was new to me to see "levain" used instead of "leaven". Honest question showing my baking ignorance- is levain the more modern, more correct spelling?Comment
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Dangit you guys, I tried not to learn something today and I would've gotten away with if it weren't fer you meddling kids.... rickgregory MBMorgan
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hoovarmin - The ratios are more or less meaningless for a home baker. I keep things simple and use a 100% hydration starter. The amount of flour and water is guided by what I need for a given recipe. A 1:5:5 starter will produce more levain for use but it needs to be active enough to eat up most or all of the flour by time you want to use it (overnight, for me). Most of my recipes need under 100g of starter so I can do something like a 1:2:2 levain easily - 20g starter, 40g each of flour and water gives me 100g.
PS: Something to note, though, is that if the starter is very active, a 1:2:2 levain may take only a few hours to become ripe (rise to peak and then start to fall) so if you feed it say at 8pm after dinner, it might have fallen by 8am the next morning. You just need to get a feel for how your starter acts. If it's active like that, you can either feed it more (1:3:3), feed it later or, if it's active enough to be ready in a few hours, feed it in the morning at 8 and use it at noon. Or you can slow it down by feeding it in the evening, letting it get going for an hour or two, then popping it in the fridge overnight.
This is both the cool thing about sourdough and the pain in the butt - your starter is *yours* and will develop its own characteristics... but it's not an industrial product, so you need to work with it. Craft vs assembly line, if you know what I mean.Last edited by rickgregory; July 8, 2022, 09:30 AM.Comment
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"This is both the cool thing about sourdough and the pain in the butt - your starter is *yours* and will develop its own characteristics... but it's not an industrial product, so you need to work with it. Craft vs assembly line, if you know what I mean."
True. Maybe that's why so many of us give our starter (or "levain" ... just to give Huskee something to pronounce
) a name. My poolish is "Winnie".
"Winnie the Poolish" ... sorry, A.A. Milne.
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