Levain building method question
Looking for some scientific comparisons to building a levain in relation to what I have been doing. I won't say that what I do is wrong, just not how others do things. I have great results and quite happy with my breads but I'm trying to find out other than the method, how things are fermenting in comparison to conventional levain building. Also if this method could fail me at some point.
Instead of a conventional levain build I use the discards of my feedings to make my bread.
I take the first group of discards and feed it appropriately then pop it in the fridge. On the next feeding I just add the discards to the fridge group and fold it into the last. So fridge bowl gets a fresh batch of starter discards and folded twice a day. The starter becomes very fibrous and rubber like even on a 1:1:1 ratio. After a few days I have a bunch of discard that fermented in the fridge for a number of days.
I use a large amount of this in my bread, I tend to keep my preferment flour 50-50 to final flour amount.
I'm getting very nice sourdough flavor , better then on a conventional build and everything else is business as usual.
So for those of you that understand the scientific aspect of the dough I would appreciate your thoughts on what my method is doing different to the dough then a conventional build. Also for a home baker will this method fail me for other bread types? I do know it also works for Pizza dough and is the first time I have good sourdough taste to my crust.
Thanks for your thoughts, Faith
Sorry for the first line it won't go away even in an edit...this is a copy and paste from a word doc.