Adding Levain Stage...How Flexible on the “When?”
I know there are those who dissolve starter (levain) into the water, add the flour, and there’s your dough (salt to be mixed in a little later). But there are also those who mix up flour and water, let it rest, then add in the starter (levain), and a little later the salt.
Imagine you’re going to do it the latter way: create flour/water dough, then add in an overnight levain. You make the levain at, stay, 8pm. It’s ready to go at 8am...but you have to put off making the dough, and the levain isn’t going to be added till, say 1pm....
What do you do? And yes, I know the float test tells you if the levain is good to go, so maybe you test it...but will it still pass the float test several hours after it’s reached it’s high point? And if it doesn’t...what do you do? Do you have to feed it and wait another 6 hours?
How flexible is the overnight levain when it comes to scheduling? If you have to adjust your schedule, will the levain be forgiving?
Why not refrigerate the levain till ready to use?
So, I'd chill it before it peaks. or in the scheduling that you had, I'd feed a 1:1:1 at 8 which for my levain would be ready at around 1.
If you are on schedule for the levain build but the final dough has to wait then you can do one of a few things.
It's nice to take a relaxed approach as you'll see that it's very forgiving and many ways to get good results. We follow strict rules at first when learning, from making a starter to the final dough but one can break the rules once one knows the rules. Try it and see.
What you said was very helpful, Abe, thank you. But I'm still confused by certain terms:
(1) Peaked. I assume this means when the levain reaches its highest level. So, in order to refrigerate it when it peaks, I'd have to keep an eye on it, meaning making the levain earlier. I mean, the idea of an overnight levain is you make it, go to sleep, and it's ready to go in the morning, right? If it peaked at 4am, then you're not there to see it and refrigerate it ;-)
(2) If I refrigerate the peaked levain...should I let it come to room temp before I add it to the dough?
(2) "Young levain": I've heard this term...does it mean a levain given only 4-6 hours as compared to overnight? Or does it mean something else?
I ask because I haven't been having much luck with 4-6 hour levains. Then again, the 6 hour one I was using had a 1:2:2: ratio. The last levain I made was 1:10:10 and overnight, and it turned out pretty fabulous by compare. It certainly made for airy bread (yet, alas, still failed for lack, on my part, of sufficient gluten creation).
I guess what's really confusing me is: What makes for a strong levain? Time, ratios or both?
And I don't mind discarding levain/starter at this point. All I want is to end up with a bread that isn't over/underproofed; once I've done that, then I can work on minimizing starter discard.
My pleasure. I'll do my my best to answer all your questions.
1: Yes! Peaked means to the highest level your starter/levain rises. And while you do need to keep an eye on it you'll eventually will get to know your starter, how it behaves when fed and how long it takes to mature. But I'm sure now you have learned that there is the rule of thumb and what works best for you.
2: Most common advice is to let it come to room temperature. My way is not to wait and just give it all the time it needs in the dough. What's the difference if you wait for it to warm up then use or use and wait until your dough is ready? And I've found that by the time you've incorporated the levain, kneaded the dough etc it's warned up enough with the handling. You can always use warm water.
3: a levain will go through stages. From young to mature. Catching the levain at different stages will produce different flavour profiles.
Don't worry about playing around with a young levain at this stage. For now go for the rule of thumb of using a mature levain which you're having success with.
Over time, I have added my starter to bread doughs at various stages of maturity, from just mature to totally collapsed and it always worked. If its super collapsed, maybe fermentation and proofing might take a little longer, but it will still work. After all, the starter is just happy it can eat.
And if you know you will have to put off adding the starter in the next day, just give it more food or put it in a colder place.
Hey, BaniJP, thanks so much for your advice. It does help me to relax to know that the starter can do its job even if it's collapsed.
Question: if collapsed, I assume it won't pass the float test?
Question 2: When you say "Give it more food" do you mean "discard X amount of starter and add in X amount flour/water" as in regular feeding, or do you mean, literally, add in more flour and water to the levain I have, no discarding any of it? If the later...how much extra flour water? And how long should I give it to resuscitate?
1. It will float until a certain point. But yeah, if it's back to its original volume, it won't float anymore. Just means that it's super hungry and when you use it, it might take a little longer to puff up the dough. Basically, as long as you see bubbles, it's good to go in my experience.
2. I mean just give it more food than usual, then the starter takes longer to chew through it (you also would eat through a plate of food faster than through a whole buffet). You don't need to discard anything. Discarding starter is really just to prevent ending up with kilos of starter at some point.
Fair enough on the adding food...but if you weigh your starter and have 100g, do you add a 100g flour and water? Or can you add, say, 40g flour and water? If, I mean, if all you’re doing is making sure it bubbles up again...
It’s all very confusing and mysterious. I mean, I understand how starter works, but the nuances/reasons behind feeding amounts, what to feed and when to feed often sound so random. Like the baker pulled them out of thin air. No one ever explains their rational, they just say: “Six hours before mixing the dough, feed your starter 1:4:4 of half-wheat/half white flour.” Why? This other baker says to feed it 1:10:10 the night before and use rye/wheat...why are his instructions so different? And how did he decide on that type of flour, that ratio, that timing?
Does a starter get its strength from: what it’s eaten (the kind of grain)? How much it’s eaten (1:2:2 or 1:5:5)? When it last ate? (6 hours ago or 12 hours ago)? All three?
Putting it another way: why did my 1:2:2 six-hour starter seem to fail (wimped out) while my 1:10:10 overnight did it’s job and then some? And does a deflated starter need a 1:5:5 feeding (lots of food) to come back to life and do its job, or just a quick, 40g snack, because the bulk of that starter is good and ready to make bubbles once it’s mixed with the dough?
Jey, there is a simple answer - Yes. Just kidding, while I am no expert on starters, there are a million answers, and they are all different. While we talk of what will a starter do under certain conditions, it is like asking how will a dog react to something. There are many different breeds of dogs . Similarly there are different compositions of yeast and bacteria in different starters. Even if you and I have a dog of the same breed, a lot of how a dog will act will depend on how it is trained from when it was a pup and how old it is. Similarly, starters with a similar makeup of yeast and bacteria will act differently depending on how they have been maintained - are they kept at 65 F , 70 F , or some other temp ( room temp is a very ambiguous term) , or are they refrigerated, and how old are they. Since each of these things have an impact, there is very little that can be said about how your particular starter will act under certain conditions. So my suggestion is to try different things, and kept detailed notes, and you may be able to get a better idea of how your starter will react.
I try to go not too much into detail for one simple reason:
You can write whole books about starters, there are so unbelievably many factors that affect it: how much you feed it, when, what you feed it, what is the ambient temperature, water hardness, air pressure, what your starter is made of. There are so many variables and I can't name and explain them all (also because I'm soon pushing my limits here) :D
That also explains why there are so many seemingly random ratios out there: each starter is different and bakers recommend what works best for them and many have multiple starters going at once.
You learn all those things over time and my biggest advice to you is simple: don't cling too much to those numbers out there, rather learn to read your own starter(s) :) Get to know it (take notes if you want), like how long it needs to chew through a certain amount of food, how it reacts to different ratios and foods. Do some tests and take notes.
Over time you will just know from your instincts how much you need to give to the starter in order for it to be ready in a certain timeframe. Just always feed it with the same flour type you created it with...wheat with wheat flour, rye with rye and so on.
The three factors that affect the starter the most in my experience are:
1. ratio and 2. time: a 1:2:2 mix is much quicker done than 1:10:10. But larger ratios seem to work better since the starter goes through a more controlled, slower rising rather than many short and quick ones. The time window when your starter has optimal maturity is also fairly broad, especially when dealing with bigger ratios.
3. what you feed it: the starter reacts differently to different coarseness, complexity of the flour (protein, ash and bran content). For example the starches are fairly simple sugars, but the ash contains minerals that are more complex and affect the starter in a different way.
To summarize: don't stress too much about different ratios from other bakers. Get to know your own starter and how it reacts to your environment and food. Start simple (one flour, one ratio) and take notes. Starters are very emotional and can be really happy or grumpy. Commit to a relationship with your starter and learn what makes him happy and angry or sad. I would even consider naming it ;)
Thank you Barry and BanJT. What both of you said was hugely helpful—especially this, BanJT:
It seems obvious when you say it, but I really needed that laid out and explained. That makes so much sense. And it really helps me know how much to feed my starter if I am going for an overnight levain. Lots of food, slow rise. Duh. :-)
Alas, my starter’s feed has changed from when I began—I didn’t know this when I started trying to make bread, meaning I followed recipes that told me to switch the feed as the starter matured, as well as recipes to make levain with mixes of rye or wheat and bread flour, and then use the left over as the new starter. So, my starter’s feed has been mostly regular, but not always. Currently its feed is a mix of whole grain rye and hard white wheat. The ratio is 1/3rd rye to 2/3ds white. My starter does seem to do best on rye (I hear that’s common—that starters love rye—meaning rye speeds things up). Maybe I should up that ratio?
As for it’s personality—it’s pretty consistent. Thanks to what you said above, I know understand why 1:1:1 ratio gets it bubbling in 6 hours and bigger ones in 12, but either way it seems to consistently doubles up. Then it stops. I thought this was good until I read one website said that a starter should triple. I’ve certainly seen those films of starters where they rise almost to the top of the jar. Is mine falling short?
Heh. I almost want to say “Why didn’t someone just say so?” ;-) I can do that.
Already done. :-D I know some dismiss the idea of naming a starter, but I certainly helps me with it’s upkeep. If something has a name (like a cat or dog), you look after it. I’ll talk extra nice to it this evening when I feed it. Here’s hoping it helps me out tomorrow on yet another attempt at creating bread that rises well, rather than falling into over/under proofed.
I'm happy to have cleared some stuff for you :)
If your starter is happy with the way its fed, then keep it that way. And yes, rye is super rich in minerals that starters love and it speeds up the process. But I try to use very little rye when if comes to actual baking since it makes doughs very sticky (something called pentosans) and has a poor protein quality.
As long as your starter consistently doubles in size, there is no problem. Sometimes it doubles, sometimes it twoandahalves (:D) and sometimes it triples (all have happened to me). I believe it could have something to do with temperature, maybe starters produce more gas bubbles rapidly in a warmer environment and it grows faster and bigger. Don't know. Might also depend on the feeding cycles. Again, many factors.
Also starters become more mature and active as time goes by.
The people with those photos where the starter bursted out of the jar just used too small glasses for showing off ;)
As you can see from my avatar there, I do love that image. And yes, I knew it had to be staged...but I was a tad worried after looking at King Arthur's website on how a starter should grow. It shows the starter going from beginning to half in five hours and then all the way to the top by eight, and mine never seems to get that high. But it's certainly frothy and bubbly and smooth. So, here's hoping!
Thanks again to you and everyone else for all the help and encouragement.
You don't know the circumstances of King Arthur's starter, maybe they have a warm environment, lower ratios or other things.
If you say your starter is bubbly and frothy, there is nothing wrong with it, its definitely alive and happy :)
Good point about trusting King Arthur’s website there. If any environment is full of wild yeast it’d be a flour company. And they do sell proofing boxes to give their starter the perfect temperatures and humidity. Thinking about it, it’d be embarrassing if their starter didn’t rise to the top. :-D
It seems like you are overthinking certain things. Are you trying for perfection or are you having a hard time getting good results? Sorry if I missed that part.
I can say from my experience the yeast/bacteria are not very picky and are actually quite tolerant.. The starter can be used within a pretty large time window between about 70% of peak and maybe 200% of the time past collapse. The results should be pretty nearly the same.
They are blind and dumb and not very mobile. If there is food nearby, they eat and make gas. If there isn’t they just shut down and wait.
In my experience, autolyse does nothing I could ever notice, except require a lot of time I could spend doing something else. Maybe I did it wrong. Maybe I did it right but everything else I did wrong... my bread comes out pretty good anyway.
I think the number one problem people have with sourdough is letting it ferment too long. I even do that myself from time to time. Most recipes tell you to do things in warm temperatures, which I would recommend a new baker should avoid. Cool temperatures are your friend.
...since I started down this sourdough road ;-) I'll get back to that. But first:
Thank you! That's is super helpful. Sourdough books and videos tell you the starter can go without feedings especially if refrigerated. But they don't tell you how long the levain remains good-to-go before being added to the dough. The directions in almost all of the recipes imply that after X number of hours (like six or twelve) you have to add it. Like the levain is at it's peak and will fail to puff up your bread if don't use it right away.
It's a relief to know that there's a lot of leeway. Which brings me back to overthinking. You see, I've been playing detective from loaf #1 because I've yet to bake a loaf that has risen as it should (one came close, but the others...not so much). And rather like a detective in a who-done-it, I've found that there are a lot of suspects. Hydration, Over proofing, under proofing, not enough gluten, de-gasing the loaf in shaping, not shaping right, even the basket being too big!...any of these could be the culprit.
Now I recently came up with a theory as to who might be the big villain. If I'm right, then my current loaf should bake up (knock wood) better than the others. If it doesn't, then it's back to the drawing board. And the thing is, some of these other suspects have contributed to—or been the main cause—of some of the failures. I did have issues with the gluten. And with over proofing. And with under proofing. One by one, I've gotten these out of the way (I think!) But my last loaf was just like the others...it failed to puff up as it ought.
Which meant I had to continue the detective work. This thread's job was to prove that the levain was "innocent" ;-D and could be crossed off the list. Which is all to say, the answer to your question is: I'm getting a lot of good results, but I can't seem to get the loaf to pop up in the oven. To find out why not, I've been kinda forced to do a lot of thinking.
Good to know. I'm pretty sure more than one of my flat-ish loaves was due to this. So many of the books/videos make it seem like the more time you give the dough the better. And to be fair, I was guilty of under proofing at least one loaf—it's confusing for a beginner to know how to balance that. To give the dough enough time, but not too much time. Any tips you have on this topic would be welcome.
I've been making sourdough since lockdown and tried many different bakes to create a brown loaf that bursts forth is light and bubbly. A few days ago I had a break though. I have always put my dough in bannetons overnight in the fridge, but was always surprised to see how much it had risen by morning. The I bought a thermometer and my fridge wasn't nearly cold enough to really retard my dough (brown proves much quicker than white anyway - 6 hrs max for the coil folds etc and I autolyze the flour a couple of hours, because brown works best softened) Lowering (so turning to a higher number) my fridge temp was astounding. My loaves tipped out firm and not at all jelly like. I bake in a glass dutch oven (better spring than iron) The spring, ear, bubbles and crust were just like the ones I envied. Today, I'm using my whole rye starter fed last night instead of making a separate levian this morning with WW flour... fingers crossed.