April 26, 2016 - 4:42pm
flour water salt yeast (pain de campagne)
I am trying to make Ken Folkish's pain de campagne. Step 2 states to transfer 360 grams of leaven into other container. Why? It doesn't make sense because of the quantity of flour added. Please explain. Am I missing something? Read and reread.
Share
to get 360 grams. So what he means is put about 6 cm of water in a bowl, put the bowl with the water on the scale, make sure the whole thing reads zero and then add Levain to the bowl until the scale reads 360 grams. Then carefully scoop the Levain out of the water with your hands and into the container where you have the autolysed flour. Hopefully this clears things up for you.
This video shows precisely how Ken Forkish weighs out his levain as described in the book FWSY. He has a whole series on youtube for the basic steps that are outlines on most recipes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-9D2Fs_qIU
I wasn't clear on my initial post. I understand how don't weigh out the amount. What I don't understand is why such a little amount when I have so much left. Why would the recipe call for such a big amount of flour if you're only going to Throw it away?
I certainly don't follow his amounts when making levain for his recipes. If you do what he says, you are throwing out pounds and pounds or kilos of perferctly good flour.
For that particular recipe, I make 400 grams of levain by taking 40 grams of starter, 160 grams of water, 40 grams of wholewheat flour and 160 grams of all purpose. That gives me a bit extra for what I lose when taking it out of its container to weigh.
i thought I was reading it incorrectly because of the waste.
You're not the first person to take note of that.
I ignore throwing out so much levain, but I like the sourdough flavor. Forkish is running a professional bakery, I'm just heating food for my family.
Hi,
i realize this is an old discussion but nevertheless I just wanted to say that I’ve been halving the ingredients for Feeding the Levain in all of his recipes from the book with excellent results.
Walnut Levain Bread (one of my favorite breads!)
50 g starter
200 g all purpose
50 g whole wheat
200 g water
These quants provide the 360g required of Levain with very little leftover tho discard.
I just can’t help wanting to understand why does he call for such excessive amounts ?
But I know I’m not the only one :)
Thanks.