October 11, 2020 - 6:09am
Best flour for a long fermented Levain
The most popular flour recommended for feeding starters is All Purpose. When considering a Levain for a dough that uses a relatively large percentage of pre-fermented flour and the final fermentation of that Levain is built overnight, wouldn’t a stronger flour (such as King Arthur Sir Lancelot) be a better choice? The thought is, the higher protein flour will produce stronger gluten that should not degrade as fast as weaker flour. In that case the stronger Levain wouldn’t introduce any or as much degraded dough to the final mix.
Yea or Nay?
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Makes sense to me Dan. It would take longer for the proteolysis to negatively affect the gluten if there is more gluten to start with.
Definitely. My go to flour is 17% protein - you wouldn't believe how for over you can go and still have a workable dough.
But, that's if you don't interfere with the gluten engine I'll call it - ie of you get the gluten before things get to acidic, you're good, if it's too acidic from the start, you inhibit the gluten forming process, and it gets ugly. Enjoy!
Phaz, where do you get 17% protein flour?
By the way - I am also an advocate of stirring staters during the fermentation stage. Have you published anything specific and detailed on the subject?
Danny
Unfortunately I can't get into that at this time. Although I'm sure I've mentioned it somewhere in here at some point.
Stirring - never "published" anything in depth on the entire theory, although again, there's bits and pieces of the logic in many of my posts (they were basically advice or recommendations relating to a specific subject). And, gotta remember, if a magician gives away his tricks, there goes the magic. Only thing I'll add to that is my posts/replies/whatever are designed for a purpose - and you wouldn't believe how little that purpose is related to bread ;-) Kinda like this one! Enjoy!
I have ordered some clear flour from bakersauthority.com and plan to make a starter with it.
Clear flour is given as an ingredient in the sponge of Larraburu sourdough from San Francisco. Doc Dough posted the Larraburu process here; just do a search on Larraburu.
Clear flour is about 14% protein.