Starter or Leaven. It is confusing
The more I read and research I find no one method of establishing your yeast component to be regarded as the right and only way to go. It confuses me as to what is the correct path to follow. It would best to give you an example of what I mean.
Chad Robertson book Tartine uses Tablespoon or 20 gms of active starter to mix with flour and water to make a Leaven that matures overnight before being used to make the final dough. Bulk fermentation etc follows.
Hobbs House Bakery in the UK and seen on You Tube make the sourdough loaf using 300gm Active Starter with 500gm Flour and 340gm Water plus 12gm Salt. Ingredients are mixed and folded and then a Bulk Fermentation takes place.
Other recipes call for a Leaven to be made with 20% Active Starter 40% Flour 40% Water. Flour being at 100% of the math. The Leaven is matured overnight before mixing the final dough,
So the question is which path do you take. Does it really matter which method you adopt. Do you try each method and settle on what you feel more comfortable with. Can a 300gm starter replace a Leaven with the same results.
Looking forward to helpful advice.
Many Thanks in advance
Terry Butwell
Chad tells you how to prep your starter (or make a leaven which will be the starter in the recipe).
Hobbs House Bakery just tells you to use 300g Active Starter (i.e. fed and prepped).
They're both doing the same thing. The difference between a six and 2 threes.
No difference between feeding your starter and using it or taking some off to feed it. No difference to it's purpose and how it is used in the dough. However it all depends on how you wish to keep and use your starter.
I imagine Hobbs House Bakery has a permanently active starter. It is fed and baked with everyday. They simply take some off and use. Chad is giving a recipe for the home baker who will probably keep their starter in the fridge and therefore explains on how to make a leaven.
Since starters can be built to different hydrations and flour you'll find many recipes with different leaven builds which therefore favour taking some off to build with. However essentially they're the same thing and have the same purpose.
Just echoing what Lechem says...
These days I tend to use the phrases "starter" (sometimes "mother") that's the stuff that for me lives in the fridge and "production levian" which is when I've taken some of the stuff in the fridge and added flour & water to it and left it until it's bubbly - then it's "production levian", however if I put it back in the fridge at that point, it's back to starter again.
A confusion comes when I sometimes use starter directly from the fridge into the dough - however, I know that it's viable as it was viable when I put it in the fridge, so it's just fine.
The amount of levian you use in a recipe will depend on the recipe - also time and temperature. The HH one with 300g starter to 500g flour - that's 60% starter (bakers percentages) which is very high, but then maybe the fermentation is very short? You can get 300g levian from 60g starter, add to that 120g flour + 120g water = 300g (leave for 4-6 hours until bubbly, then use) Typically I use half that, so 150g levian to 500g flour but that then needs an overnight ferment plus 2 hours proof.
Every baker has their own ways - keep baking until you find something that suits you though.
-Gordon
yeast water, biga, old dough and commercial yeast are leavens that will rise a loaf of bread, proofed and ready to be baked. Levain in French means sourdough. A starter is what you keep from one bake to another and a levain is what you make fro the starter to have enough leaven to make the dough rise properly in the amount of time you want to spend making a loaf if bread.
Happy baking
If I may I'd like to piggy back a bit and ask about the usage of excess flour to make levains.
Specifically I am going off Ken Forkish's book 'Flour Water Salt Yeast'. The day before the bake, he says to feed your starter as follows in order to make the levain:
active starter: 100g
white flour: 400g
whole wheat: 100g
water: 400g
Yet, when it comes time to make the dough, you only pull 216g of this levain to start the bulk ferment. Why the massive use of flour that essentially gets wasted? If it is to preserve a percentage of flour to starter to water, why not down size to say 20g of starter and the respective equivalent percentages?
Would you expect the levain created using the above formula to bubble up tremendously in the first couple hours after feeding the way a typical feeding of the starter would? Or because it is a smaller starting percentage of the starter will it take longer (given 70 degree habitat and a starter that when fed double its weight does indeed bubble like mad after a few hours).
I'm curious about that too. When used that formula I only made enough levain to have enough to start the bulk.
wildly wasteful levain builds. I chuckle every time I see his video wher he trashes most of the levain he made calling it spent fuel and then uses the rest of it t omake a loaf of bread - I call it Spent Fuel Bread. Just make the exact amount of levain you need and donlt follow his times for any bulk r proofing either - they are way off too, Watch the dough and not the clock.
Happy baking
Thanks. I starting cringing when I watched my flour stash diminish knowing a good portion of it would be going down the drain... Do you think he was some reason for doing this instead of scaling? Perhaps he thinks it affects the flavors or yeast activity?
I'm starting to read more on your No muss no fuss starter dabrownman. Great info and something I will experiment with.
When you say his bulk ferment times are off, should I take that to mean that a 12-15 hour bulk ferment at room temp shouldn't be done, or only that I should look at the dough and not clock.
I think there are a few people on here who seem to have a match between their home temperature, humidity and whatever, and Ken Forkish's. For them the long bulk ferment at 'room temperature' seems to work. It does not seem to work for most people though, from comments posted. It doesn't work for me. You do have to be careful with his recipes as he uses relatively small amounts of young levain so the bulk ferment will take time, but my advice is to watch the dough. If you need it to sit for the longer period of time, leave it out until it's visibly rising, then put it in the fridge (overnight, for example). Same with the final proof.
would have a puddle of goo - not bread here in AZ. Even in the wonter with the kitchen temp in the high 60's it would be too long.
I don't know why Ken makes so much levain - none of it makes sense to me from a science point of view but bakers believe all kinds of things that aren't true - like satainlees steel bowls shoiuldn't be used or that b eginning starters shouldn't be covered witha lid or cling film because the wee beaties they want to capture float out of the air in their kitchens into their starter cultures.
Always watch the dough to be where it shpould be for the next step and nit the clock. Everything in kitchen is different than someone elses: flour, water, starter, temperatures, humidity etc so the times for ferment and proof will be different as well.
I long since decided to give Mr Forkish the benefit of the doubt and assume he knows what he's doing. He's going for a very specific flavour profile and possibly the way he builds the leaven for home use brings it as close as he thinks is possible in a home environment.
I realize that's a lot of assuming but I have long wondered if you do get .e.g. a more mellow flavour if you use a portion of a large leaven build. And if so, what percentage of the leaven to the flour? Obviously the rate at which the nutrients are consumed will be at a slower pace than a 50 g build. Or maybe not?
Experience has taught us that you can create an excellent loaf with leaven from very different hydrations and from different points of the refresh. And, going one step further, the BF and the prove time also impact. And do you BF or prove cold or warm? From varying these components you influence the flavour profile. Each change dominos on another.
So my thought is that you are still going to get a fine Forkish loaf using whatever starter/leaven you want as long as it's healthy. You just may not get the flavour of a true Forkish. And you probably won't get that anyway because you don't have his kitchen, his flour, his touch and so on.
And that's my two cents - right or wrong. :). Musings only. I'm still a newbie against many of the experienced bakers years of practical experience.