Levain maintaining and using in Ken Forkish's "Flour Water Salt Yeast".
Right now I'm holding a 100% hydration and white levain, I thought maybe to change to his method, can anyone hand some impressions?
Also I'm bit confused with his methods. I'm talking about the section about sorting and restoring the levain.
First of all, after I take the levain out of the refrigerator and give it the first feed, in the first instruction he state to leave it overnight, which I understand as 8-12 hours. One page after that he gives an example of schedule where he leaves it for 24 hours. What is the right way to do it?
Secondly, he states that the portion I want to save for future use is taken from the ripe levain after the second feed which seems pretty odd to me (I'm used to put it back in the refrigerator after I have fed it and before it gets ripen). Can anyone back him up?
Thirdly, in all of his levain bread recipes he calls to use a levain which was fed 24 hours before (for feeding the levain which will be used for the final dough). Does this instruction intend only to people who feed their levain on a daily basis? If so I again don’t understand the logic behind that (from my little experience with levains after 24 hours from the last feeding the levain will be like a soup).
Thanks a lot
Tal.