Here's my first attempt at making Leader's Pain au levain.  Caveats: This is only the 2nd bread I've baked and my first attempt using levain.

Pain au Levain: First sourdough 

To me, the dough felt somewhat wet and needed 18 minutes of kneading before it would pass a window-pane test.  After a few minutes of kneading, it felt sticky again and I felt compelled to flour my hands and scrape the board.  The rise during fermentation was small, consistent with Leader's estimate of 25%.  I Fermented for 1 hr, folded and then for another 3 hrs (76F-80F).  At this point, I was out of time for the night and put the dough in the fridge for 6 hrs.  I took it out first this this morning, let it warm for an hour and divided it.  The dough still felt cool when dividing and shaping and proofed slowly in my kitchen (79F).  Shaping looks easy on youtube, but I found it more difficult in practice.  I'm not convinced that it doubled, even after 3 hours of proofing.  A finger test suggested it was ready (or as good as it was going to get) so I slashed and put in the oven.  This was my first time using an oven stone (a piece of 1/2 granite).  My only complaint about the instructions are that it wasn't clear what size of a loaf I was making.  I didn't realize they would be so small.  It states the expected weight of the divided dough, but not the size of shaped and/or finished loaf.  Mine finished out at 4'' w x 9'' l x 2.75'' h.

 The apartment smells great but I haven't cut into them yet (still too warm).  A few things to work on for next time: (1) The bottom of each loaf may have burned slightly, (2) I need to work on my shaping and slashing technique as they aren't the prettiest loaves I've seen, and (3) I think I might double the recipe next time and make two larger loaves.

Tips, comments, advice all greatly appreciated! 

I've finally gotten a rise out of my stiff dough levain (from Leader's book titled "Local Breads").  The trick was to raise the room temperature from 76F to 80F.  I've switched now to 'refreshing' the starter and/or preparing for baking.  One point from the book isn't too clear to me.  Once I have refreshed the levain and let it ripened for 8-12 hours it says I can either use it right away or store it in the refrigerator for 1 week (before refreshing again).  My question is if I do refrigerate it, can I use it straight from the fridge to make bread or do I need to repeat the feeding and spend another 8-12 hours preparing the levain prior to using it?

My wife recently picked up a copy of Leader's Local Breads, and I am part way through reading it.  I needed to bake this weekend, so thought that I would try a formula from the book.  Based on what I had available, I opted for the Pain au Levain, using my existing sourdough starter to prepare the levain for the formula.  I also chose to add sunflower seeds to the bread, following one of Mr. Leader's options.

It was enjoyable to work with a mostly-white bread dough again.  Much of my recent baking has been predominantly whole-grain breads (not counting RLB's focaccia that factored out at 113% hydration!), which tend to have somewhat heavier and stickier doughs.  This formula calls for small quantities of both whole wheat and rye flours, but they are fairly low percentages of the total flour content.

Here's the finished bread:

And a shot of the crumb:

As you can see, there was plenty of oven-spring.  The dough was a little bit short of being completely proofed.  I may have been able to let it proof a little longer than I did, but I'm happy with the outcome.  The flavor is surprisingly (to me) mild; the wheat flavor comes through cleanly, along with the nutty sweetness of the sunflower seeds.  The last couple of sourdoughs that I have made had a high whole wheat content and a pronounced sourdough tang.  Other conditions were essentially the same, so it appears that the flour has an influence on the degree of sourness.

This is a very enjoyable bread.  I hope that others in the book are equally good.

Paul 

Hi all,

I'm just starting out and I'm at the end of day 4 of trying to create a stiff dough levain from Leader's "Local Breads" book.  Leader describes a long list of properties that a good levain will have when it is ready and mine seems to exhibit a few, but not all.  Most importantly, I'm not convinced that it is growing but a sufficient volume after feeding.  My kitchen was a tad cool at the beginning (67F) but is now 72F.  Each day I'm adding 30 g of water, 50 g of all purpose organic and 5 g of organic (hard) whole wheat.  I'm getting the smell, there appear to be bubbles forming and the dough is certainly tasting tangy but it just isn't rising as much as I expect.  I have it in a metal mixing bowl so I am not actually measuring its volume, but I'm sure it isn't doubling in 24 hrs.  It certainly isn't crawling up the sides of the bowl.  Leader describes the formation of 'visible gluten strands' but I don't know what these look like.  Can anyone post photos showing the progression of their stiff levain?  Beyond following the daily routine, is there anything else I can try?

Polish Cottage Rye

Polish Cottage Rye - Crumb

Multigrain Sourdough

Multigrain Sourdough - Crumb

Both of these are breads I've baked several times before and enjoy a lot. This weekend, I ran out of King Arthur bread flour and substituted Golden Buffalo flour in both breads. We had some of the Multigrain Sourdough for breakfast. As I came out for breakfast, my wife, who was just finishing hers, greeted me with, "That's amazing bread." 

David

This weekend I made the Fresh Herb Twist from Daniel Leader's Local Breads. It uses 3 fresh herbs — thyme and rosemary (from my garden) and basil. It was delicious with my beef vegetable stew!

Fresh Herb Twist

Yesterday, I made the Polish Cottage Rye from Daniel Leader's "Local Breads." Today, I made the Silesian Dark Rye from the same book.

Yesterday, I baked the Polish Cottage Rye from Daniel Leader's "Local Breads." It is, as described, a very wet dough. Forming the boule was more like folding and pinching seams than my usual rotating and tucking procedure. In any case, the resulting bread was pretty. It was delicious 3 hours out of the oven - very moist and tender with distinct sweet and sour overtones. This morning, toasted with butter and apple butter, the rye flavor was more prominant.

David

I made this rye-fennel crackerbread from the new Leader book, Local Breads. Easy and good! The recipe is here.

Susanfnp

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