The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Levain pateaux + avocado

Abelbreadgallery's picture
Abelbreadgallery

Levain pateaux + avocado

I have many french friends here in Mexico. Some of them are bakers. So talking about bread and fermentation is what we usually do. One of the things we talked in our last meeting was Levain pateaux. What's that? Let's say it's a levain with the consistency or the texture of a pâte fermentée. But it doesn't include salt. So it's a stiffer levain. Ok. Which benefits? Adds more strenght to the dough. More You prepare it from the liquid levain starter you have. Less lactic acidity. I have made it several times and it works fantastic, specially for loaves and all kind of bread you require a good structure. This is how I made this avocado bread. This is a very usual system in french bakeries. Liquid levain for baguettes, small pieces of bread, pain viennoise (any kind of bread you require elasticity and thin crust) and levain pateaux made from the same liquid starter for big sized bread with thick crust (loaves, boules, batards, etc).

Levain pateaux: 100 gr liquid levain (mature) + 200 gr strong flour + 100 ml water. Mix until you get a nice dough. Temperature of the levain, around 26-28ºC. Let rest one hour and store in fridge until next day.

Final dough: 1 kilo of flours + 650 ml water + 400 gr levain pateaux + 22 gr salt. This time, the weather is hot in Mexico so I use the levain pateaux direct from the fridge. Anyway, the temperature of the dough after mixing around 26-28ºC, the temperature when natural yeast and bacterias are happy. Bulk rise around 2 hours aprox, maybe you can make 1 fold to give more strenght to the dough. Then divide, put the the avocado cubes inside every ball, and shape like batard. Final fermentation around 1h to 1h30m, and then bake. So as you can see it's a very quick method to bake, if you levain pateaux is powerful.

 

greyoldchief's picture
greyoldchief

Good seeing you back.  I missed your posts!

Abelbreadgallery's picture
Abelbreadgallery

Hi friend, I've been very busy, touring in Mexico. See you.

mutantspace's picture
mutantspace

nice one. I miss your travels through bread :) still using that 90% biga bread from many moons ago