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Hamelman's "Workday" bread stiff culture

alcophile's picture
alcophile

Hamelman's "Workday" bread stiff culture

I have a question about Hamelman's "Workday" bread recipe. A stiff culture is specified for the Still[sic]-Levain Build.

I only maintain a 100% hydration rye culture. Can I use this 100% culture, adjusting for hydration, in the the levain build? I really don't want to add the extra steps to produce a stiff culture.

Thanks!

mariana's picture
mariana

Yes you can. In the section of the book where he explains starters, Jeffrey himself says that it doesn't matter whether you use stiff, or liquid, or in between starter.

He says, in one of his letters published online,

While it's good (and important in my opinion) for today's ever more skilled bakers to know how to convert a liquid starter to stiff and vice versa, there's no reason to necessarily do that, because the amount of mother culture going into the builds is very small. Small adjustments in flour or water will compensate at the time of the build so that levain consistency is correct. 

You can read more of what Jeffrey says here

The only thing that matters is the number of grams of flour in your starter. In his recipe, (I linked it from Googlebooks), Hamelman asks for half Tbsp of stiff starter which weighs 5g. You can assume that it means 3g of flour in his starter (and 2g of water). So you use 6g of your starter instead.