Eric Kayser Levain questions
Anyone out there familiar with the Eric Kayser levain method? It's the more liquid one as compared to say Forkish's more thick levain.
Forkish has a particular way of reviving the levain when it's been in the fridge. It's a 2 day process that gets your levain ready to use again for his sourdough bread. We've successfully created Kayser's levain but now we're asking ourselves the following question: once we've left a certain amount of Kayser's levain in the fridge for use at a later date
A) how long can it stay in there before it just totally dies? and
B) what is the process when used within a permissible amount of time to prepare it for use again? He seems to suggest in his book that you just let it come to room temperature, but naturally, being used to Forkish's method that seems off to me. Maybe prepping liquid levain is less involved?
Another question if anyone can answer or help... in Kayser's Larousse book, he talks about feeding the levain the following way. Whatever your 100% weight is, you add 25% water, and 25% flour. But in a video he did more recently, he says [paraphrasing], "so if you've got 100g of levain, you add 100g of water and 100g of flour". I'm not a maths genius but that's not the same ratio. Any thoughts on this?
Thank you all! Being able to ask questions here got my sourdough bread perfect. Great community.
Hey Tinpan. I'm not familiar with this starter recipe but did a quick Internet search and it looks like he is recommending a 1:1:1 ratio (per the last paragraph) to feed and/or revive your starter.
https://www.maison-kayser.com/info/en/maisonkayseracademy/make-your-own-sourdough-starter-following-eric-kaysers-recipe/
"You can keep the rest on the fridge for 24h, 48h or 72h (airtight)
And the day before using it, you should refresh it with wheat flour and water.
For example, if you have 200g of sourdough starter
You add 200g of wheat flour and 200g of water."
Liquid starters are harder to maintain that thicker ones, so I don't think I would tend towards a very thin starter unless you like feeding it multiple times a day. I usually keep my 'resting' starter that I keep in the fridge at a 1:1:1 ratio for normal feeds, but will build that starter to 1:2:2 or 1:3:3 if I need to feed it and leave it out overnight, which slows the rise, peak and fall, which works better with my baking schedule. My starter is too active to do a 1:1:1 night time feed to have it be at its peak in the morning. I've parked my starter in the fridge for up to 3 weeks without any issues, but I would do a multiple-day 'boost' after that to get it ready for baking. Otherwise, just one overnight feed at 1:2:2 or 1:3:3 seems to work just fine for me.
Thank you, @naturaleigh. We went with what he says in the book, 4:1:1, or 100g(levain) - 25g(flour) - 25g(water). I don't know what doing the 1:1:1 ratio would yield but this worked great for getting his baguette recipe in the book to work. Hisbook also says you can keep that levain in the fridge for a few weeks and just let it come to room temperature when ready and then feeding before use. Outside the fridge he says feeding every 3 days is fine. So since the ratio worked and gave us the best baguettes we've ever made (exactly the "baguette tradition" sold in France) we're gonna follow the other things the book says as well. Why he says something different on his sites, we have no clue.
Thanks anyway!
Hi .you say you take out the levian bring to room temperature add water flour then create your recipe.do you have to wait for a day till you strengthen the levian or did you use immediately.thanks ian