February 14, 2012 - 8:58am
levains, or preferments?
Hi all:
I had good success last week and now want to try again (sorry ;-) )
My starter is lovely and treating me very nicely thanks to all of you. But, now I need to get clear in my mind what is a levain, what is a preferment--are they different in some way, or just different words for the same thing? I understand that I must feed my starter and let it build, then do a levain, or a preferment and let it build then do the dough--do you have any time schedules you like to use. I still feel like I am in an elevator and people keep pushing the wrong buttons and I never get to my floor! Up down up down up . .. .
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is a big deal for me. Why? Because if only we would standardize our usage of terms, we could communicate better.
I've gotten a lot of criticism on these pages for using the Bread Baker's Guild of America's definitions. Now that they have made them available on the www.bbga.org page for anyone, not just members, I feel better about reinforcing these definitions. If you look under this link http://www.bbga.org/bread/bakers_percentage you will find a long and scary seeming technical article on bakers percentages and how they are used in a formula. Yes, it's longer than most people want to read - but it is the key to pushing the right elavator button.
So here is some clarification in a shorter form:
A pre ferment is a generic term for taking a portion of the flour in the final mix from the bread, mixing it with leavening (normally at a lower percentage of the overall percentage of what is used in the formula) and allowing it to ripen over a long period of time (12-14 hours). This is done to provide the advantage of a very long, slow fermentation without taking up the space for a long, slow fermentation of the entire dough.
So that's all a pre ferment is. It is leavened, but we have not yet discussed with what it is leavened.
It can be leavened with either commercial yeast (what you buy in the jars and packages) or sourdough starter.
Since you are focused on sourdough, I won't give you the whole pre ferment lecture.
What many bakers do is to take a small amount of their storage starter (that is the thing that you feed on a continuing basis) and mix it with flour and water (in varying percents) and allow it to ripen for 12-14 hours. This is usually referred to as a levain - or simply a sourdough.
Other bakers simply feed their storage starter and when it is mature, use it to leaven their bread.
The differences are subtle, but with a levain the baker has more control. For example, the baker can use more or less of the seed in the mix to make the levain ripen faster or slower. Or the baker can add salt to slow down the ripening even further (which you would never do with your storage starter). Another advantage of the levain method is that the storage starter can be kept at a constant hydration and pre ferments at different hydrations can be built up from a small amount of seed.
And finally, if you are removing a small amount of seed from your storage starter to make a levain and then feeding the remainder, you have less of a chance of accidentally baking your storage starter. I always admire the nerve of those folks who feed thier storage starter and then must remember not to use all of it in the mix.
Anyway, I've probably over answered your question, but what I have found is if you go about these things with the correct method, they are very, very simple to make sense out of.
So what do I do? I look at my formula and see what percentage of my flour will be pre fermented in the levain and the hydration of the pre ferment. If you get formulas from books like Mr Hamelman's "Bread..." or any really good contemporary bread book, you will see a part of the formula that is dedicated to the pre ferment.
I will mix a very small amount of seed from my storage starter in the pre ferment (which is now called a levain - because I have used sourdough) and allow it to ripen for about 12-14 hours. Then I will add the appropriate remaining ingredients (the final mix) and procede with whatever mixing method I have determined that I will be using.
Just so very simple.
My advice to the beginning baker is to get a well written formula that expresses the bread in three ways - "Overall formula" - "Pre ferment" - and "Final Mix" and study it a bit. Once you untangle the math (and it is not scary territory math) you will be able to visualize the process and meanings a bit more clearly.
When I learned baker's math, it was as though someone had turned on a bright light. Finally all those terms and recipes made sense and I have not looked back. I would start every beginning baker with lesson on baker's math - scary or not.
I know I go on and on, but this is really a good place to get the whole picture and to get it right.
Others, I know, will disagree with me and say terms don't matter, be free to be you and me. They may speak more directly to you - we all have our styles of learning.
But what I have written really does reflect the best representation I can put forth on the use of these terms. I hope it helps.
can be dangerous... If you happen to search YouTube for sourdough you'll find well meaning home bakers throwing around wild terminology for the process they're using. Adding to the confusion. proth5 tells it like it is. A preferment can be any mixture of ingredients assembled prior to the final mix.
Jim
Pat -- you mentioned: "... the Bread Baker's Guild of America's definitions. Now that they have made them available on the www.bbga.org page for anyone, not just members...". I folowed the link to the BBGA page and looked but failed to find any such definitions. Can you please be more specific? Thanks.
Jerry
Thank you both very, very much. I too, like to use the appropriate word. proth 5 picked up on the problem and has given me a clear description that I will hold in my notebook forever! It is important to get agreement on words in order to understand what we are describing. Thank you both.
to be harder than I think it is because last time I mentioned this folks had trouble finding the definitions. Sigh. So, here goes:
Here's what I do to find the definitions.
Go to the ww.bbga.org web page
On the yellow bar you see menu options like "About", "Join", and "Bread" - Choose "Bread"
Under that menu you will see "Formula Formatting" and in the body of the text you will see a "Read the entire article here" - click to follow the link.
A PDF document will open.
Now, here's the trick - you need to read the whole article. I know that I have a paragraph mind in a Twitter world, but you have to read the whole thing. Very informative.
Hope this helps.