Hi Everyone..
Following the rule of 15 I pulled out my three week starter (one week now in the fridge with 100% hydration using white flour only) and took 24 grams out of the jar - a beautiful thick goopy starter. I added 24 grams flour and 24 water. The second feeding was around 2pm - four hours later - added 48 of each flour and water. Can see activity, bubbles, etc. Nothing over the top, but it's slowly active. I'm now two hours after the second feeding and I don't think there's much "doubling".
My question is, before the third feeding in about 2 more hours - does it really need to double or is it being active enough? I'm working towards a final levain quantity of 360 grams for two loaves that I'll ultimately shape and leave in the fridge overnight..
Thoughts? Many thanks!
what the rule of 15 is, but if I needed 360g levian for some dough, I'd take 72g from the fridge, add in 144g flour and 144g water, leave for a few hours until I see bubbles then use it.
ie. divide what I need by 5 then use 1/5 starter from the fridge, and 2/5 flour and the last 2/5 water.
I think some people write that as 1:2:2
I don't care for doubling, I just want to see lots of bubbles on the surface and it smelling nice.
If you don't have 72g starter then you just repeat the process to make 72g - ie. 72/5 is 15, so 15g starter plus 30 flour and 30 water, leave that a few hours, then repeat with the bigger numbers, however I'd really suggest keeping more starter than that - I used to keep about 150g when I was just making 1 or 2 loaves a week. I currently keep 400g each of white wheat, white spelt and rye. (have made 115 sourdough loaves this week so-far)
-Gordon
Gordon, 115 loaves of bread this week?! Wow. You either have a bakery (very cool), are running a soup kitchen (totally admirable), or have one heck of a big family (my condolences!). That's remarkable!
Your 1:2:2 is what I would normally have though to do (I'm relatively new to leavain). But the rule of 15 came from dabrownman - a source I've come to trust! But this is my first time trying the rule - was to try last week but family got in the way so it's this weekend. http://www.thefreshloaf.com/comment/329307#comment-329307
The main point is that the doubling from your comments isn't critical, so I'll keep going rather than starting over! The bubbles are there, just not super fast and not a true double just yet but I have about an hour to go before the third feed. Lets see how it goes!
Thanks
as they're called in the UK. Started as a hobby, now look where I'm at. Sort of all-consuming.... Still, it's good fun and more than pays for itself. (and I forgot to mention the buns, cakes and pastys too :-)
Don't wait too long for it to double - just in-case it doesn't. If you have bubbles then its working. It just might not be working as fast as it potentially can. My ferments are overnight, so right now I have several tubs of dough in the bakehouse snoozing quietly until 6am tomorrow. Hm. bed time now I think!
Just read the rule of 15 thing. Interesting. Seems to achieve more or less the same thing. Might be good for folks doing 1 or 2 loaves but it won't work for me on a daily basis.
Do taste and smell your starter though - it's a good check that all's well.
-Gordon
Gordon.. anyone that makes 115 loaves deserves my attention! I took a look at your profile, and that took me to your site.. very nice! If only I lived on your side of the Atlantic, I'd drive over and buy a loaf! Enjoy, FRANK!
will be very slow. But have heart - no worries yet.. I would feed it #3 stage in 2 hours and see if it can double in another 4 hours. If it does fine, if not then wait 2 more hours and see if it can double in 6 hours instead of 4, If it does it is reaady to go.
It took a while, but by about 9:30 tonight I the levain had just about doubled after the third feed. I started at 10am! Clearly it's weak. I mixed the final dough but didn't get it to fully double before shaping and getting the loaves in the fridge tonight. I'm curious. Should I think that with time a 100% hydration starter with "strengthen" (as mine is just 3 weeks old) or should I just forget white and go to whole rye for the starter given it will mostly live in the fridge?
Thanks!
in 4 hours after the 3rd feeding is fine to use especially when it is such a young starter. In the AZ summer i use 2,3,3 hours for the builds and it doubles every time after the 3rd feeding even when the 10 g of rye seed was stored 12 weeks in the fridge with no maintenance.
I used David Snyder's San Joaquin methods to make a fine SD yesterday on a 40% whole grain SD bread and it worked great.
I used to keep white, wheat and rye starters and the maintenance was a killer and why i now keep a stiff, No Muss No Fuss rye one only. You can build what ever kind of levain you want from it and it takes virtually no maintenance for at least 16 weeks. i wouldn't try to converyt your young one to it until it is vigorous and fully mature - about 2 more weeks.
Happy baking .
I just put the loaves in the oven, from the fridge, after a 13 hour cold ferment in the fridge. The rise this week is about an inch lower on both loaves from what I see so far. Last week was 100% white flour levain and this week it's 75% whole wheat leavain - the primary difference being that the last bake was using a levain that then was getting daily 100% hydration feedings vs this week's out of the fridge starter using rule 15.
I'm sure part of it is that my levain isn't super strong yet, it's a 75% whole wheat recipe and my thought is that whole wheat might be harder to rise in general, and lastly that (as it's a FWSY recipe) my 1.2 grams of instant yeast added to the final dough (in addition to the 360g of levain) was less than the 1.75 grams called for - I ran out of instant yeast and need to buy more. I didn't weigh them when shaping so the right loaf looks like a higher rise only because it's bigger by weight.
I'm wondering how to make the starter (keeping it white for now as you suggest) stronger for next week's bake without keeping it out of the fridge and "fussing" with daily feedings to make it stronger for the next bake.
I even scored the tops, not something I normally do, to give them extra ability to rise up easier (that could be mis-thinking on my part).
So this is the crumb from this weeks 75% whole wheat levain bread. Other than the amount of rise, I can't think of what I would say to improve the bread. It's got just the right amount of moisture in the crumb, it looks consistent, and the taste is gently nutty and flavourful - it's very earthy if that make sense. You can small a bit of the "sourness" and the sour taste is very subtle (the way I personally like it). The crust is chewy but in a good way and my family thinks it's the best tasting crust to date. The loaves just looks small and I didn't get any "open seams" from my scoring. But I think that's just because my levain is young and maybe just too weak still. Thoughts?
About the same bubble size as most of my breads (I'm not a fan of big bubbles, nice though they may look, they don't hold jam!)
Don't stop now ...
-Gordon
Thanks Gordon - subsequent to the post I learned that bran in the whole wheat flour breaks down the gluten strands and a dough with this much whole wheat flour - 75% - is bound to be denser than an bread made with an identical process but using white flour. Who knew?! The longer it sat out on the counter the better it tasted. I just had some for breakfast and really loved the flavour!
can't seem to upload it onto TFL.. when adding media it doesn't let me insert an image from my desktop..
is what we first learned when I started my graduate studies in chemistry. Don't over think too much as it leads to paralysis by analysis. I've developed a simple approach to sourdough that uses the basic Hamelman recipe where the levain is prepared at 125% hydration over night (20% of the final dough weight) and the mechanics of David Snyder's San Joaquin Sourdough recipe for dough mixing and gluten development followed by a 20 hour bulk fermentation in the refrigerator.
I maintain a 100% wheat starter and I follow Gordon's approach, just look at the bubble formation. You can do a float test if you want but as you gain experience, identifying an active starter is pretty straight forward. Remember that sourdough does not rise as rapidly as yeast based doughs.
Alan, for two short paragraphs you pack a punch. Thank you for all the information. I've got my eye on David's recipe. Once I finish baking the last few breads in FWSY I thought I would give it a go. I have found getting the levain established, maintained and this week out of the fridge for the first time for a bake, a bit more fussy work than I intuitively think is necessary. But I'm learning my way through the process. KISS is correct. Thank you for the feedback!