Hi All,

Just wanted to share with you my bake from Monday, 9/5/10...  I had some friends in from San Francisco, who have never had my bread, so I wanted to make them something special to take home with them after brunch...

Here is a pain au levain, that I will call my 5/10/20 pain au levain...  It was inspired by JT's 85x3 bread that Farine blogged about here: http://www.farine-mc.com/2010/04/jts-85x3.html [1]

I did not have any T85 flour, but I could make 3 starters...  This bread is basically 95% AP (king arthur) 5% rye (hodgson mill), approx 66% hydration, 2.4% kosher salt.

Starter 1 (Rye Sour): All of the rye flour (5% of total flour) prefermented at 83% hydration for 24hrs at room temp.  Use 4% sourdough starter.

Starter 2 (Liquid Levain): 10% of total flour (AP) prefermented at 100% hydration for 1 hour at room temp, and 23 hours at 40F.  Use 20% sourdough starter.

Starter 3 (Stiff levain): 20% of total flour (AP) prefermented at 55% hyrdation for 1 hour at room temp, and 23 hrs at 40F.  Use 20% sourdough starter.

I'll continue this if anybody is interested...  The result I think speaks for itself...

This is the walnut raisin pain au levain using the same dough as above but adding buttermilk powder, a little sugar, butter, toasted walnuts and raisins...  I think it turned out really good...  Note to self: Mix this dough separately...  Trying to knead in powdered buttermilk is an excercise in futility.  Some of it combined OK, but the stuff that didn't clumped in the dough, and I had to spend about 15 minutes kneading and picking out the clumps before kneading in the butter, walnuts and raisins...

Cheers!

Tim