December 12, 2014 - 10:49am
How much levain to keep when getting ready to bake
Hey folks,
I'm new to the fresh loaf but have been a member and following lots of amazing stuff for months now. Seems like a really great community of passionate bread bakers, which I have now become.
Question:
How much levain do you keep when refreshing to prep for baking?
I understand that the left over levain is basically spent fuel, so using a lot doesn't benefit in any way and can possibly make your bread too sour. Is this correct?
My starter is 100% poolish. Being 125g BF, 125g Red Fife, 250g water.
Normally I just eyeball how much I throw away. Could be a little more, could be a little less.
Is there a % that you use of old levain to new flour?
Thanks so much and looking forward to finally joining in on things!
Cheers!
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... get 13 replies :)
My sourdough starters contain about 500g of "mother" and live in the fridge.. I take from the mother, bulk it up if necessary then replace what I've taken out and back in the fridge it goes.
e.g. earlier this afternoon, I took out 370g of mother out of my wheat starter, added into it 740g of white flour and 740g of water, mixed, covered and left it in the larder to "ripen" and I'll use it in a few hours time, but right after I took the 370g out, I put back in 185g of flour and 185g of water, gave it a stir and back into the fridge it goes. (My wheat starters are always at 100% hydration)
I never throw starter away - well, I might if I have to not bake for about 2-3 weeks, then I'll do a refresh, but I'd probably make pancakes with the stuff I'd remove when refreshing it.
Another method is to use all the mother to make a bigger/active starter, then take from that to put back in the fridge. And so on - there are as many variants as there are bakers * bread types, and I'm sure others will post their ways. I bake sourdough bread 6 days a week and this way works for me.
-Gordon
Thanks Gordon.
What I do is basically what you mentioned in your last paragraph.
I bake about once, maybe twice a week. So I only refresh my starter when I'm ready to use it. About once a week.
The way I use my starter is that when I'm ready to bake, I will take it out of the fridge the night before, throw away up to half of it, sometimes more, sometimes less. Add my flour and water and let sit over night for 12 hours.
Next day throw out about half, sometimes more, sometimes less. Add flour and really warm water to jump start it for baking in about 2-4 hours. Use the amount of starter I need, depending on what recipe I'm doing. Put back in fridge until next time.
I do not replace the flour and water before storing back in fridge for the week.
Also as you can see from above that I do not "take" from my starter to make a separate levain for baking. Maybe I should so that way I won't throw any out. I can just take what I need to make a separate levain for the baking, then replace what I took from my "mother" starter and put back in fridge.
... How to keep your starter.
1. Keep your 'mother' starter separate and in the fridge as you only bake once or twice a week.
2. Don't keep too much mother starter. You'll only have to discard and it's difficult to maintain.
3. Start doing pre-ferments by taking a little from mother starter and building it into the levain.
4. When your mother starter runs low then feed to top up. I can go for a week or two quite safely before I have to feed my starter again. All the while keeping it in the fridge.
So here's an example...
You bake twice a week let's say. So keep 90grams of mother starter.
Each bake take 30g from mother and build into your levain.
After 2nd bake you'll be down to 30g of mother starter so simply feed 1:1:1 and leave out for a few hours then put it back in the fridge before its exhausted it's food supply, so for example just a few hours, this way it'll continue to feed in the fridge but more slowly and won't start to go hungry.
Now you are back to 90grams of mother starter and then start the process again. No discarding and no swimming pools of starter.
You won't forget to keep some back. Less accidents will happen. Better all round.
It's all about maintenance.
Also you can keep mother at your preferred hydration and feed it with your preferred flour. Then when building your preferment you can alter it for your recipe all the while keeping mother separate.
It's awesome that you mentioned a preferment Abe. I've only been baking sourdough since April but I'm totally hooked.
My recipe has been a basic sourdough and just trying to get consistency. Which I have now accomplished. That recipe was a 70-2:
400g bread flour
100g Red Fife or Rye flour
500g of 100% hydration starter
So as you can see I was using a lot of starter. Now it's time to move on and work on the more complexities and challenges of drawing out more flavor.
Looks like a preferment and extended bulk fermentation is my next challenge. Exciting!!
Do you have any suggestions about getting started on a preferment?
That's an awful high percentage of starter.
How about the good old 1:2:3 method?
1 part starter
2 part water
3 part flour
So for example...
150g active starter
300g water
450g flour
+ 2% of flour for salt so 9g salt.
To not make things too complicated just do a single build for now.
50g starter from 'mother' + 50g water + 50g flour
This is your pre-ferment.
Then form dough keeping 20g of water and all the salt back and cover.
After 40min add the salt on top and wet with water. Squeeze and fold dough till salt and water fully incorporated.
Rest for a further 20min.
Then bulk ferment for 6 - 8hrs incorporating some stretch and folds every hour.
Shape into banneton and final proof till ready.
Score and bake.
This will be a 71% hydration dough providing your starter is kept at 100% hydration.
Best of luck. And remember once your mother starter gets low then feed again leaving out for a few hours and returned to the fridge.
Let me know how you're doing.
I got it from Chef Jacob Burton, which is where I started my sourdough adventure. The recipe is his basic sourdough country boule, just to help get started in the right direction. Jacob's been a big inspiration and a lot of help through the whole process. And I baked some seriously amazing loaves with this process.
I realize it is a lot of starter, but it was for a 3-4 hour bulk fermentation. Now that I'm gaining more knowledge and a serious addiction to bread baking ( I even named my starter, which I hear if you don't it's blasphemous), I'm learning that you don't need that much starter.
I love the old 1-2-3 method you are recommending!! AWESOME!! I am definitely going to start with it.
I notice you mention 150g of "active starter. I take it this means that you have already prepped "mother" starter, and she passes the float test? Then you take 150g from her to create the preferment?
It's not necessary to feed mother every time you make a pre-ferment. It's the difference between a 6 and two 3's.
Until now you have fed mother everytime to make bread and kept some behind.
Now what's the difference if you take some off mother and build that into a pre-ferment? Nothing! That becomes your active starter - your levain.
Now you can feed mother once a week but bake twice a week :)
This way mother is always kept separate. You can keep less and just build however you need.
Only when mother runs low do you feed to create more.
You had a problem your way of creating starter is that you fed mother what you wanted to use! Then you had to wait till mother was at its prime and then keep some back for the next time. Problem is mother was always spent and would have to be fed straight away again. You might also forget to leave some for next time.
This way you feed mother, for example, on Sunday. Leave out for a few hours and return to the fridge.
Come Tuesday you wish to bake. Take a little from mother and build your preferment.
Then on Thursday you wish to bake again so you take a little from mother and build a pre-ferment. Etc.
After a week you see mother is running low so simply feed mother wait a few hours and return to fridge before all the food is spent and your good to go again.
Just make sure mother is fed every week or so. This way you don't build loads every single time and you aren't discarding.
Your preferment becomes the active starter which becomes the levain.
Cool! Makes sense Abe. I'll give this a try and will let you know how it goes. Thanks so much!
Cheers!
Hey Abe. For this preferment am I adding it to the flour and water right away, or letting it sit for a bit before incorporating it?
Infact it becomes the starter you use for the recipe. So allow the preferment to feed and become active just like your starter. So depending on how much it is fed and room temperature it should rise and bubble for however many hours. Then just like when the starter is ripe so to when the preferment is ripe do you then add the flour and water to make the dough.
Effectively you have taken some starter off from mother to create another starter.
OK! Awesome! I understand now. Thanks again so much.
Another question for you: After not feeding my starter for a week, it has a layer of liquid on top (alcohol correct?). Do you have any advice on how to start the preferment if that happens?
Usually I just dump it out, feed my starter for a day or two and then it's ready to go.
Stir it back in or take of the liquid and give it a stir. Makes no difference. It's called hooch and in all intense purposes it's beer. If your starter looks dryish then stir back in. If not then discard the hooch. If you are not planning on baking then feed it like normal. If you wish to bake then take some off to build your preferment and I'd do two builds as it's hungry. Then feed original starter as normal and return to the fridge.
Thanks Abe.
I'm just working on my preferment now. It's been about 4.5 hrs with some bubble action happening. I think I'll give it another 1/2 hour and then start the flour mix.
When making your preferment is there a certain temperature of water you use?
Hooch means your starter is hungry.
Till now you've been feeding mother to make starter to put in your bread.
However the stage when it goes into your bread is when it's completely fed.
So when you returned your starter to the fridge it's already starting to starve unless you feed it again.
If you follow what we discussed of feeding mother and not allowing it to eat all the food and then storing in the fridge and then taking off a little to build into a pre-ferment each time then you shouldn't have an issue of hooch after a week.
You can easily keep it for a week in the fridge without hooch starting to form.
If I were you I'd stick to feeding once a week and baking twice a week. Now just decide what's a good amount to keep. I'd say build upto 90grams of mother starter, you might decide on a little more or less depending on your recipes or baking cycle, then with each bake take of 30g give or take. Then after 2 bakes through the week your starter will be down to 30g so simply feed it 30g water + 30g flour to bring it back to 90grams.
Just an example. You'll have to decide what you're most comfortable with.
Today I've been working on reducing the amount of starter I keep in the fridge. And also doing what you are suggesting above.
But typically I can only bake about once a week anyways. Since I'm on holiday right now, I will probably be baking everyday because: 1. I'm addicted 2. I'm super stoked about trying a preferment
Let's say you find yourself baking only once a week...
Keep 30g of mother.
Take 20g off for your preferment then...
Feed the remains 10g of mother with 10g water + 10g flour. Keep out for a few hours and return to the fridge.
Next week repeat.
There is no one correct way. Just find a schedule that works for you!
I might just keep a little more just in case.
Until I get your basic recipe down that I'm trying, I think I'll do:
Keep 100g of mother.
take 50g off for my preferment (your recipe)
Feed the remaining 50g of mother with 25g water + 25g flour.
See how that works for now.
1:1:1
That means if you have 50g then feeding mother with 50g water + 50g flour = 1:1:1
Right!
Sorry can't take credit for it :)
1:2:3 (+ 2% of flour for salt) is the formula.
You don't have to stick to 150g starter: 300g water: 450g flour + 9g salt.
Just stick to the formula and adjust if you wish to bake more or less.
But let's say you wish to. Perhaps you only have 1 banneton and it takes a 900/1kg dough.
Then better to keep 60g of mother.
Take off 40g and feed that 55g water + 55g flour as you preferment then...
Feed the remaining 20g of mother with 20g water + 20g flour.
Feed less than 1:1:1 and it'll run out of food quickly and will starve. That's probably why you get hooch after only a week.
Got it!
and you lose the benefit of mass effect. More than 100g important and 350g is more like it for healthy culture
If you bake often. Bake once or twice a week then keeping large amounts will result in discarding. If you keep 100g and you take off 50g, for example, to bake with then the 50g you have left will grow into 150g when fed the minimum of 1:1:1. Then come a week later it'll grow into 300g and the week after that 750g unless you discard.
Hi, not sure if this will get to you, but I came across this thread when trying to figure out how to have less discard, and keep my starter in the fridge. I am very new to sourdough baking, but having fun. I am feeding my starter 2x day, 1:1:1 with 50 g of each, throwing away a small amount. I want to try to take from my starter and feed 1x a week, so it is the the fridge. I have a question about taking it out and using it to bake - I currently build my levain with 50g of starter, 200g white flour, 50g ww flour, 200g water, and use 360g in the recipe after 6-8 hour. Do I just take the 50g out of the fridge and make the levain, or does it need to get to room temp? I have saved 150g of starter, so I can use 1-2 times a week, then replenish. Thanks
... then keep doing it!
I'm baking 6 days out of 7, so really don't want to waste anything as it quickly mounts up and adds to the cost, but for personal use if it were only 1 or 2 loaves a week I might consider changing the way I do it. (however early on, I found that the method I use today worked for me, so have just stuck with it) In another activity I used to do, we had a saying: "What works, works." and I think that applies to baking too. I'm fascinated by the variations people do with sourdough though - why my original comment about ask 12, get 13 answers :)
The flavour side of things is something I need to spend more time with though - I know my bread tastes good because others tell me (and they keep ordering more), but taking it from that "good taste" to something better? And doing it daily? That's my next challenge.
-Gordon
So many things can effect taste. How much starter, how long fermentation to feeding etc. So many variables. I'm constantly experimenting. That's what makes sourdough so much fun!
But if someone bakes once a week and feeds mother to use in a recipe then a problem can arise. When mother has fed and is at the active stage so has eaten all the food then the levain is taken off to add to the recipe, mother will begin to starre the next weeks bake. So will have to be fed asap. But then come next week mother is fed again and the process repeated. Mother will grow continually unless there is discard.
Thanks so much for your insight Gordon. I get the same compliments about my bread as well, and it's just a basic sourdough country boule recipe. But it's time for me to step it up which is why I moving on to a preferment.
Here is a picture of my basic sourdough country boule that I've nailed down.
"Ordering more" you say. Do you own a bakery?
Cheers!
I'm sure it tasted good too!
I run what's been termed a "microbakery" in the UK (and maybe elsewhere too). So my kitchen has been inspected by the local environmental health people, I have a food hygiene/safety certificate (1-day course + exam) and I sell my breads via 2 small local shops (and occasionally direct to my neighbours) Right now, (7:20am) I have 24 loaves proving at various stages about to go into the ovens (and 2 figgy rye's already in one oven) ready to be in the shops by 9am. It's a fun hobby that pays for itself - and a little more. This past week I've made more mince pies that I've ever seen too - almost got the hang of them now :-)
-Gordon
is to open my own bakery someday. Ever since I started baking, especially bread I knew that's what I wanted to do.
I would like to start out of my home, selling to the neighborhood and farmers markets. But here in Ontario from visiting our local health & food safety website it looks like I need a totally separate kitchen as well that also must meet certain regulations. Although I have heard of people getting around this. I will have to do some more investigating.
There are also great community kitchens that I could rent out.
Congrats on your microbakery. Sounds amazing!
... that we have a sensible approach to selling stuff you make in your home kitchen, although there were moves a few years ago to clamp down on it, but it's a long tradition for e.g. the W.I. and church groups, etc. to bake stuff at home for sale to raise funds, etc. and that sort of relatively occasional thing is allowed without any checks, etc. To do stuff on a more regular basis just requires a bit more thought - procedures and paperwork - but at the level I do (about 50-80 loaves a week plus some cakes, etc. and the occasional "outside catering" event) it's relatively straightforward involving a 3-yearly inspection and the food hygiene & safety certificate (also needs "topping-up" every 3 years).
If you're passionate about it, then do the research and see what comes up - post here too as there may be others in your area who've done the same, you never know!
We (me & wife) started a few years ago just making cupcakes for a local shop, then we were asked to do some local lunches/suppers, etc. and a wedding and it just sort of grew. 18 months back a new wholefoods shop opened locally and I made some bread for their opening and just carried on... (Now supply to another community shop too) Almost all the bread I make is sourdough based, but many variants with wheat, spelt and rye flours. I'll keep doing it as long as it remains fun and not a chore, but I think running a full-on bakery is hard... There is a woman in the town a few miles up the road from us who does that - she's almost half my age and gets up at 3am.. 4 hours before I want to get up!
Tomorrow I'll be making some stollen for samples to give away on Monday then (hopefully!) take orders...
-Gordon
...seems to be the norm for bakeries. I've already figured that one out, but I'm still willing to give it a shot to see if it's for me or not.
I'm not big on cakes and pastries as of yet. So far my vision is just bread and small treats on the side. Like butter tarts, cookies, etc. I'm sure I will probably get into doing some pastries eventually.
That's awesome how you started out like that. I love hearing those stories. Very inspirational!
Do you just have the one oven at home at home? Standard size? Gas/electric?
I will definitely post abut this sometime to see if anyone from Ontario has any advice for me.
If you want to make a slightly bigger profit then cakes, etc. are one way to do it. Easy to make and the look good and can sell with a bigger margin, however bread is the bulk of what I do - if I could sell direct then I would, but round here the local farmers market is pretty feeble and all the others already have good bread producers.... (I live in the middle of organic/hippy central where you can't move for farm shops/markets, etc.)
The bigger bakeries have combined retarder/provers, so you can load them up with cold dough the day before, then they stay in fridge mode until 3am or whenever, then switch to proving mode and warm up and prove the dough - great for standard yeasted mixes - as you can then get up at a mere 4-5am to start the scaling/shaping/proving before the big bake...
I have 3 ovens at home. One is a gas range-cooker (Think Aga or Rayburn, but a different make; Stanley) It's a great cooker, but the oven is small - can only bake 2 medium sized loaves at a time. Oven No. 2 is a conventional bottom of the range (ie. cheap!) Beko domestic kitchen 2Kw fan oven - however it's run 6 mornings a week right up to 250C, abused by being filled with steam and its not let me down. (Being cheap actually means little to go wrong and I can take the inside panel off with 4 screws to replace the element or fan if I need to) Oven No. 3 is an entry-level commercial oven - the biggest I could get that would plug into a standard 13amp socket. It also has a water injector which is fairly crude, but seems to do the job. It's a Lincat EC08. It can bake 12 small loaves at once. (Although its more comfortable with 9) The Beko can only do 6.
I did get up at 6am this morning, but my aim is to get up at 7am, but it all depends on how many loaves I'm baking. Saturdays I'm baking for 2 shops, so it's the biggest bake day.
If I had to, I could do 2 or 3 runs through all ovens at the same time to bake a batch of about 60 loaves in one go - but that's 2 hours of oven time and presents other problems - like where to store the cooling bread! 24 loaves is a comfortable limit right now, but I have plans to refurbish the room above our kitchen into a "bakehouse" which will give more space and also more space to run courses on basic bread making (another good way to help the hobby earn its keep - that Lincat wasn't cheap!)
The down-side of all this is that I don't get much time to experiment, but its still a relatively low-impact at this level - 10-15 minutes mid-afternoon sorting out the sourdough starters and weighing up the flours, then round about 9pm mix and knead the doughs (half to 1 hour), leave overnight until 7am then tip-out, scale, shape, prove and bake. One shop gets a cake once or twice a week (they have a small cafe area) and this week they've been taking mince pies - 80 so-far, who knows how many next week...
Fortunately my "real" work (Freelance software/hardware/network engineer) is almost always done from home, so I don't have to worry about getting into work, etc.
Cheers,
-Gordon
...nice subject title Gordon!
Here in Toronto we have amazing farmers markets in the summer, with some of them continuing through the winter indoors. Most of them only have 1 or 2 bread bakers and some have none.
Your operation sounds pretty big time, coming from your own home.
I have standard gas oven that could fit 6 large loaves, or 12 medium loaves. Which is not bad. The next step down the road for me would be trying to do a large batch of dough for 12 loaves. Right now I'm a single loaf kind of guy.
I've seen how some do it in the large plastic container where they put the dough in after mixing and bulk ferment, stretch and fold and then dump it out for cutting and shaping, then final proof in baskets or bannetons.
I'm an outdoor educator/guide. So I do contract work. My goal at first for example would be to take Thursday and Friday to prep and bake. Then sell to farmers markets and the neighborhood on weekends.
But that's future dreaming for now. We'll see how it goes.
Cheers!
Dave
It's a "big operation" in that I'm making lots of bread, but the process is the same as if I were making 1 or 2 loaves, just scaled up, somewhat. Kneading bigger loads of dough, working out how to scale/shape and prove them efficiently - and in what order, so they go into the oven in the order they were shaped in - important if I'm doing 2 runs in the same oven - so I don't get one batch under and the next over proved and so on.
I did recently buy some bigger polythene boxes with clip lids for bulk fermenting - more for stackable convenience than anything else. I was originally using the mixing bowls with covers and I still use them for the smaller mixes. Saturdays bake saw me with 5 different types of dough - rye, spelt, white wheat, my rustic wheat (white + wholemeal) and malted (aka granary) The Rye rises in the fridge in bannetons, the others were in the polythene tubs.
I don't fold/stretch - mostly because it's rising overnight when I'm sleeping... If I'm making a special loaf or 2 for home use, then I will if I have the time.
Do check your oven to see if it will take the load - it's not just about physical capacity, but the ability to take on 6-12Kg of wet dough and heat it up to boiling point- quick enough to cook the middle and not burn the outside... I typically put the loaves in at 250C and reduce it to 210C after 11 minutes, but the big Lincat needs to be set to 275C then reduced to 225C to get the same result. (The Stanley, being a tonne of cast iron doesn't notice)
Cheers,
-Gordon
Last week I topped up my mother starter which is 100% whole rye at 100% hydration. Left it out for a few hours and returned to the fridge. It's not completely spent and had plenty of food to feed off slowly for about a week or two I'd say.
The recipe I'm doing at the moment calls for active starter of:
54g starter + 60g water + 70g emmer flour
Now here's a rule... a once fed active starter will work but a twice fed active starter is even better. Now my starter has been in the fridge a while so it'll be a bit sluggish and I wish to have a twice fed levain for great results. So I'm doing two builds.
1. 18g of starter from 'mother' + 18g water + 18g emmer flour.
Now I have 54g of active starter (a while later) and it's on its way to being almost 100% emmer flour starter.
2. (now back to the actual recipe)
54g active emmer starter + 60g water + 70g emmer flour.
Will take much quicker this time as it's already active. It's almost 100% emmer flour. It's changed hydration to what the recipe calls for.
Voila!
In a week or so my mother starter will run low so I'll feed it but separately from any recipe, keep it 100% rye and 100% hydration which is my preferred, but by no means the only, maintenence.
Abe, I would think you'd know better by now. As I've explained here more than once, done correctly, the excess starter goes into storage for your next week's bake. No discard! All you have to do is manage the portions properly. Now you're advising people to discard.
I haven't had to discard a single drop of starter in recent memory. None.
I'm advising a way to avoid discard. I too never have to discard.
Sorry if I misinterpreted your post.
Bit abrupt at the moment as working on my next sourdough. Experiment going on. You'll be happy to know I'm taking your advice on this one. Will be relying solely on oven spring straight from shaping. Will let you know results tomorrow evening.
Abe, I recently tried an experiment with you in mind. I called it "proof in the pot".
I proofed the dough in my Dutch Oven and baked it directly from there after slashing. It was a glob of dough that had expanded more horizontally than vertically. There was no degassing. The oven spring was OK but the loaf was kind of flat due to the horizontal expansion.
I then baked another loaf. This time the dough went for a ride in the mixer after proofing. It was shaped into a dough ball, slashed and baked.
Judging from the expansion of the slashes, the oven spring was comparable between the two methods, so I didn't get the improved rise/oven spring I was hoping for with "proof in the pot". I prefer the shaped loaf I get when I shape/degas it in the mixer after proofing.
In a big, mechanized bakery they would put the dough through a rounder to shape the dough balls. Rounders are very expensive, though, and out of the reach of all but the largest bakeries.
350g and take what you need to inoculate your levain, say 30g to build. Not sure how you are doing it but that is good for people who bake at home. When it gets low refresh the refrigerated culture with leftover 50g, add 100g water and 200g flour. Say a mix of whole wheat, white and maybe some rye. Whatever combination floats your boat.
how David does it he knows what he is doing. He posted it somewhere a while back. Before you backe make a liquid levain with say 40g starter 100g water and 100g flour. Then use some of this for whatever you want to build. Say 30g for a 250g levain at 76 degrees for 2 1/2 hours bulk for 2 loaves ex.....ymmv