Starter, Levain & such OH MY!

Thought i'd put in my two cents on starter. Here are many advantages to using a starter from flavor to health benefit and appearance.

A starter can be called, wild yeast or levain but is the same thing. It is a dough where a natural strain of yeast, found in the flour, has been developed and is being kept alive.

For this week we will go over getting a starter going, and maintaining it.

You will need a scale, a fork and a masonry jar.

Ingredients are whole wheat flour unbleached and filtered water.

Measure on the scale 60g of whole wheat flour and 60g of filtered water, mix well with the fork.

Close the lid so there is just a small gap to let air come out.

That's it. No need for sugar, honey or anything else.

Keep on the counter top in your kitchen for 2 days.

On day two, into a clean masonry jar, pour 30 gr of the starter, dump the rest. It may look like nothing is going on and it is normal.

Add 30gr of flour and 30gr of filtered water to your starter. It is called feeding it. Always put the same amount of flour and water than the existing starter.

As you can see it will triple in weight so it is important to only keep as little as possible when maintaining it.

Wait another 2 days and repeat the above process. At that point you may be able to see a small rise of bubbling of the starter. But if you don't see anything, don't despair it takes time.

It may take 5 to 10 days to have an active starter depending on the season, temperature in your house, type of flour used and so on.

You know it is active as the starter will rise and start bubbling. You have then successfully created your own starter using natural wild yeast present in the flour.

As a side note, call me crazy but starter is alive and many people do name their starters. You will find that it has a mind of its own. It may die for no apparent reason after a few weeks or it may last for decades. If you start different starters from different type of flours or at different times of the year, you will notice that they are not quite the same. Flavor, smell, reactivity ...

As your starter becomes active, you may need to feed it with water & more or less often. When to feed it?

- Every 2 to 3 days is somewhat of normal feeding schedule. But depending

- If you notice a sour or vinegar smell, your starter is hungry. Same process, keep a small volume and feed it its weight in water and flour.

- If you want to use it to make bread or pizza dough, time to feed it. 2 days before start feeding it morning and evening it will increase in strength and will rise more rapidly. The day before you use it, as much as possible, do a morning feed, noon feed and evening feed. It will be very reactive for the next morning and make your bread.

Now a few tricks:

- If you want to make bread on Saturday, work all day like me and have no time to feed it at noon on Friday- no problem. Just do a double feed that morning. For 30gr of starter, feed it 60 gr of flour and 60 gr of water. Make sure the container is large enough as it will rise.

- The starter will rise and push, enough force to break a masonry glass jar. So make sure to keep the lid slightly open. You can put a coffee filter with the screw on rim, and not use the metal lid. That way it keeps bugs and such out and make the potential over flow less problematic. I also like to re-use 16 oz yogurt containers. They are easy to clean and a small incision in the lid is enough to allow air flow.

- As the warmer days of summer arrive, the extra 10 degrees in your house may be enough to make your starter bubble out of control. While most starter don't like to be refrigerated, you can "train" it to be ok in the fridge.

Over the weekend put it is the fridge for an hour the first day then back on the counter top. The second day, in the fridge for 4 hours, then back on the counter top. Finally on the third day leave it overnight, then back on the counter top. After than it can stay in the fridge for a whole week before you need to feed it and give it a chance to gain some strength at room temperature.

So give it a try and let me know how it worked for you!

Bon appetit.

Antoine