Starter vs. Levain?

A levain may be just a portion of your starter, and therefore exactly the same, or it may be very different. It can be dryer, or it can be wetter than your starter. It can have different flours, or other ingredients that you don't want in your starter. Basically, your starter is meant to be kept fairly stable, while the levain may go through some wild changes in order to produce a particular result in the bread.

A lot of times, there is really no difference between the two. In practice, there can be, at times, huge differences. To keep it as simple as possible, the starter is the part you keep and feed and otherwise maintain. The levain happens when you take part of your starter and do something with it to make it comply with the recipe you're using. Also, a levain is sometimes made from a bit of commercial yeast added to flour and water, and could have nothing to do with a starter, although the yeast in it is doing the same job. Here are a few examples. Let's assume you have a healthy starter that is comprised of 100g flour and 100g water. That is considered 100% hydration, and is pretty common. People use this to make bread all the time, with or without a levain.

Now, let's make three different bread recipes. One calls for 150g of levain at 100% hydration. That's the easy one. You could either take 150g of your starter as is, or you could take a smaller amount of your starter, and feed it to make it the right amount. For instance, you could take 50g of starter and give it 50g each flour and water. Then, you let it ferment until it is ready for making bread. It is actually the same as your starter, but it is a levain. One reason you might want to do it this way is if you are using a type of flour in your levain that you don't want to incorporate in your starter.

Second bread calls for 60% hydration. Nothing fancy, but your starter is 100%, so conversion is necessary. You could take out 50g of starter and add 75g flour and 35g water to make 160g levain. The math is like this: 50g/2 = 25g each flour and water in your starter. 160g levain at 60% hydration would have 100g flour and 60g water. So, you subtract 25 from each of those. 100g - 25g = 75g and 60g - 25g = 35g. When you add all that back together, you get 75g + 35g + 50g = 160g. By doing this, once again, you have made the levain you need out of a portion of your starter, without changing your starter.

Third bread. Here's where you'll really see a big practical difference with a levain. Some recipes have an actual scheduled levain build. The hydration may change at every "feeding" and then again when mixing the final dough. You may do something like this: 15g 100% hydration starter + 20g flour and 10g water, then several hours later add 45g flour and 20g water, then several hours later add 100g flour and 60g water, then several hours later mix into your dough. Now, I made those numbers up and they are entirely arbitrary, but I've seen real bread recipes that look just as arbitrary as that, yet they have some unseen purpose for the exact levain build schedule that they chose. An ordinary starter, even if it happened to be the exact hydration level of the final levain here, would not have the same characteristics of texture and flavor.

tea berries I've had the same question and you articulated it very well. But DavidEF you gave an easily understood answer that clears up many questions. Thank you. 

This terminology is somewhat of a bugbear of mine.  I think a lot of it is unnecessary but bread making has been going for 1000s years and certain terminology has evolved and differs country to country.

Right or wrong the term "starter" in general actually means SD starter.  i.e. a maintained leaving agent of yeasts and LABS kept for the purpose of making sourdoughs or adding that sour flavour to a wide variety of breads.  Strictly speaking though the term "starter" could cover a number of other leavening agents so I find the term largely un-useful.

I similarly don't like the term "levain" or for that matter "poolish" or "biga".  They are unhelpful.

In the end they are all PRE-FERMENTS of some kind.

So for clarity in my own mind I keep to these terms:

Leavening Agent - any substance capable of raising a bread (baker's yeast, wild yeast, baking powder, yeast waters etc)

Mother - is the core quantity of any leavening agent that is maintained week on week (in the fridge or otherwise)

SD Starter - is a culture of wild yeasts and LABs kept for the purpose of raising breads and providing a specific flavour (flavours varying according to taste and how you maintain the culture)

Pre-ferment - Any mix of flour, water and leavening agent that is made specifically for a loaf in advance of the main dough mix.

That's just me though :-)

In French: Levain is a "mélange d’eau et de farine qui a fermenté naturellement à l’air durant 4 jours environ. Le levain une fois réalisé est réutilisable pour le peu qu’on prélève une petite quantité à chaque fois qu’on l’utilise, puis qu’on complète cet extrait par autant de farine que d’eau et qu’on laisse pousser 12 heures durant."
http://www.paintradition.com/lexique

Partial English translation: It is a "mixture of water and flour which has fermented naturally during 4 days approximately. ..."

In French, generally there is a distinction made between "levain" and "starter", the latter often being denoted as "rafraîchi".

This is a distinction adopted by Calvel in Le Goût du Pain. It is one adopted also by Forkish:

The French word levain is derived from the Latin levare, meaning "to rise". The words mother, chef, and levain all describe the same thing: a natural culture the baker uses as a leavening source. Some bakers and texts use different names for the culture at different stages; or they may use more than one culture. Chef often refers to a master culture that is fed separately, whereas starter refers to a portion of the chef that is fed in one or more stages and added to the final dough mix. [FWSY, p. 121]

For me, that is the terminology that I find less confusing. But as they say, to each his own as long as we understand what is being said.

means sourdough adn pain is bread so 'pain au levain' is sourdough bread in English.  Chef in French means the leader or chief and refers to what we call mother or starter the smallest  portion of levain that we keep stored and maintained.  In French,  Indian Chief is Chef Indien.  So building a  levain in stages in English is taking the chef and adding flour and water to it in one or stages to make a larger levain than the chef but not large enough to be a bread dough.  When the built levain is added to  the final flour and water to make the bread dough it is just a larger levain but the last one making a sour dough.

So it is appropriate in English to take a primary levain - chef, starter or mother, and make an intermediate levain by adding flour and water in stages and then take this to make  the larger levain for bread  - a sourdough.

I think most English speakers would be happy with starter or mother, levain or intermediate levain and then sourdough for the 3 stages - even though they are all levain starting from small to large.

We are only separated by different languages unless the we is canadian, English or American and we are separated by the same language,

If a baker wants to say they are taking a pinch of small sour pile and adding flour and water to it to make a bigger sour pile 12 hours later .....o that they can add some more flour and water to with a little salt to make an even bigger sour pile that you eventually bake into a sour pile of bread it is ok with me :-) 

I personally think that size of the sour is what separates the 3 levains and that should be used to distinguish them just as the Italians use the size of the grain to distinguish  the 3 farro's - einkorm (small), emmer (medium) and spelt (large) so small medium and large levain would work for everyone the world over.   

Sadly, when we use the word farro, no one knows what it really is because we don't use the adjective to distinguish them and most don't know the that some Italians do, but not all,  or that there are 3 kinds of farro.  Farro in the Whole Food's bins is usually emmer but not all the time. 

If we stick to size descriptors for sourdough - then no worries the world over. 

But,  I really don't care about it too much.   We have managed to bake SD bread for thousands of years in every language,.  I actually enjoy trying to figure out what folks are really talking about when it comes to SD especially when translating recipes from other languages.

Happy baking

I believe"Levain" in French translates as both Leaven and Sourdough.

If you tried to follow a recipe that didn't describe what they were using in it (e.g., they say add 150g levain but don't describe how that 150g came into being), I'd say move on to a different recipe. Like you, I am new to bread baking and SD, so such a recipe is clearly not intended for me/us.

In my young glossary;

• starter = mother (stuff you start with, keep in the fridge for the next loaf)
• levain = preferment (what you turn your starter into for the loaf you're baking now)
• dough ball = everything else (required by the loaf recipe you are making, that isn't starter or levain)
• loaf = starter/levain + dough ball (all that you're finally going to bake)

FWIW, I think David did an excellent job explaining things as I know them. I do see one little difference in my actions to those others that have posted, namely how I maintain my starter.

I haven't been trying to do anything in my levains other than keep them pure (e.g. my rye 100% starter makes rye 100% levain, WW starter makes WW levains). When you get into making levains that aren't identical to your starter (e.g. flour ratios, water to flour ratios), you won't be able to do what I'm suggesting.

I take all of my starter, build it to the levain required grams (e.g. 150g) + 35g - 40g extra. I figure out how to do this in 3 builds, with 4 hours between each build. I ferment @ 92F, to maximize sourness, and really invigorate my starter. So, for example:

• I have 35g of 100% WW @ 100% hydration starter in my fridge, my recipe calls for 150g of levain.
• Feed 1 - 17g WW, 17g Water
• Feed 2 - 35g WW, 35G water
• Feed 3 - 25g WW, 25G water

So I end up with 189g of "starter", but since its been fermented, we now call it levain...;-]

At this point, I take out the 150g I need for the recipe, and put the rest away. The nice thing about dong it this way is as follows;

• I know I have 150g for the recipe, no shortage because I couldn't scrape the bowl well enough.
• I know I have at least 30g to become my new starter.
• I know what I'm now putting back in the fridge is fully active, and hopefully a bit more sour than before.
• I don't have to "feed" my starter, and if I only bake once a week from that starter, I never waste any flour on "feedings".

On the down-side, if you forget to reserve some of that levain before you mix it with the dough ball, you've lost your starter...;-]

Good luck.

So, Chad Robertson's Tartine Bread book discusses the use of a ripe starter (1 TBSP) to create a levain by adding 200 grams water and 200 grams flour, which, after 6-12 hours creates a puffy levain used to add to the flour water and salt to make the dough. 

He he proposes to use a ripe starter and a young levain.  The levain you don't use is the starter from which the next levain is made. 

Unless it is a verb.   Loafs around.   Lately there is just too much loafing with "loafs" when there are loaves to be eaten written.  :)

How about the Maple Leafs hockey team or the Seven Dwarfs?  Somehow the Maple Leaves and the Seven Dwarves do not sound right after using the terms incorrectly all these years.  Are we going to start correcting each other now ?  I don't know about anyone else, but I have better things to do like bake bred, whoops, I mean bread! 

                                                Chris