Levain/preferment vs increased starter volume

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Grenage on 4 Apr 2012 at 07:22

Hello... again,

I have to ask, because it's been bugging me for a while.  Many recipes out there call for a levain, which ferments for 12-16 hours before being added to the final dough; I can see why that's done.  A few recipes merely throw a load of 'starter' in with the final dough mix, and call it a day.

Why the separate levain rather than the all-in-one method; is it simply because the volume required is not available and people want to avoid inflating their starter?  I've just been feeding my starter by a good ratio, and using 100g 'starter' for every 300g of flour in the recipe*... I get the impression I'm missing a crucial viewpoint.

*I say recipe, at the moment I'm just using 1:2:3, with 10% rye.

Adding a small amount of seed to the pre fermented flour is done for a number of reasons:

  1. Control (1) - you can vary the amount of seed quite easily if you are taking it from your storage starter and addding it to the pre ferment.  Perhaps a little more when the weather is cold, perhaps a little less when the weather is hot.  Although you could do this with the totality of you storage starter, it is a bit more difficult.
  2. Control (2) - if you want to delay the ripening of a pre ferment you can add salt.  You might not want to do that to your storage starter.
  3. Versatility - Perhaps I prefer to keep a liquid storage starter and yet I would like to do a firm pre ferment for this particular batch of bread.  With a separate pre ferment, I can take a small amount of my liquid seed and easily calculate and build up a firm pre ferment.  Converting my storage starter is also possible - but not as easy and then will result in a change to my storage starter.  Also, I can keep an all white flour storage starter and build up a variety of pre ferments (whole wheat, rye, combination) without impacting the storage starter  (there is much discussion about this, but in practice I have found that I can build up a rye sour from a white starter and it performs just fine).
  4. Safety - I do admire those brave souls who just build up their storage starter and then have to "remember" not to bake it all.  I just take my little blob and the rest of my storage starter stays safely away from the mix and bake process.

So, those are the reasons that I have seen.  I'm sure other people have seen even more...

Hope this helps.

Hi, Proth5, thank you for your reply.

That makes a bit more sense, I just haven't hit the level of baking yet where I would encounter the distinction.  Perhaps in a few years I'll look back at the madness that is the current routine. :)