levain test 1

Occasionally I end up with small portions of the sames starter in various states and thought it would be useful to to document leveaning capability of the levain as a function of pH, given similar maintenance.

I have been leaning more on pH for maintenance and tuning of my desem cultures.  While the standard volume increase still provides some feedback, small changes in hydration in the 50-60% range can have a significant impact on the dough strength and the ability for CO2 to expand it, and it is difficult to separate the dough properties from starter properties when observing it in a jar.  It seems pH has the potential to be a more hydration invariant measure of maturity, although I'm sure it isn't a magic solution, as I suspect there are many ways the same culture can arrive at the same pH with different microbe states -- a starter that was refreshed 12 hours ago and has reached a pH of X is different than a more acidic starter that has just been fed with a whole wheat to achieve the same pH of X due to buffering of the flour. Since what we ultimately care about is the ability of the starter to leaven dough, I tried a very quick (and very casual) experiment comparing the same culture with 3 different final builds that resulted in slightly different pH values (all maintained at 58 F): (1) build N (yellow band) at close to 2:1:2 after 24 hours with a pH of 4.08; (2) build N+1 (feed of N) at 2:1:2 (red) after approximately 12 hours; (3) build N+1 which was the same as (2) but with a little extra hydration for faster fermentation, maybe 20:13:20 or similar.  I mixed bread flour with 2% salt at a fairly stiff hydration in the food processor, and split it into 3 equal 150 gram portions.  I inoculated each of the 3 portions with a separate 15 g sample from each of the different starters (not equal % PFF, but close).  I tried to be as consistent as I could.  It was a couple of weeks ago, but I believe I folded it in by hand and continued mixing each one in the food processor for a similar time period or number of turns.  I was primarily interested in how much variation there would be across starters, rather than trying to making any conclusions about a best pH from a single experiment.  This was thrown together in the morning, using an old bag of Gold Medal flour that I wouldn't use for bread at this point and I felt comfortable sacrificing it.  Progress was documented during the day by photos.  It could be a starting point for more carefully controlled and repeated experiments.  I also wanted to test the volume increase of my LKBB desem culture.  The two younger (higher pH) starters (blue and red) both started faster, but the two lowest pH starters (yellow and blue) had the highest rise, with blue resulting in the largest increase overall.

Of course there is a lot that could be improved here, but it is interesting that there were fairly similar, when considered in relation to the impact of dough handling and fermentation in an actual bake.  I would guess the younger (12 hour pH 4.3) starter might have the potential to produce a slightly more aerated loaf, despite the slightly lower % PFF relative to the stiffer red version.  They all started at the same height (same weight within a gram or so), but the initial photo was taken after initial signs of fermentation.