Levain Build Questions

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dobie on

These are all very fundamental questions but I want to be sure of a sound foundation and I would appreciate any comments. My starter is 100% hydration AP flour, about 6 months old and behaving well. Room temp would be roughly 65-70F.

Starter = Mother? I think that's obvious, but I've never asked the question. The terms are apparently used interchangeably and not necessarily together. I just wanna make sure.

When I feed my starter/mother, (1:1:1 starter, flour, water) then that is my first build? I let it rise to about 150% and then I can pour off, reserve and refrigirate my 'fed' starter. The remainder is my first build levain?

Repeat the same for the second and third builds?

If I were to feed it 1: 0.5: 0.5 (trying to control volume but maintaining 100% hydration) other than a quicker rise time (I'm assuming), are there any other considerations flavor or behavior-wise?

If I were adding my sifted bran (home-milled) to the levain, when would I do that? For how long? Should that be a seperate levain or is it just in the mix, so to speak?

Should I be rising my levain to 150% or 300% or somewhere else?

How do these dynamics affect creating a more or a less sour dough?

Thanks in advance, very much.

dobie

 

 

...and know something of the levain from my reading but that doesn't impart any insight into what might or might not be possible with it, only with what it's actually used to produce.

You can buy a couple of middle eastern sourdough cultures at http://www.sourdo.com/

I've found that if you don't sterilize your flour (bakedry flour at 220 for an hour) their specialty cultures may be overpowered by native yeast in your flour when you activate them.  The have a much more distinct character if you use sterilized flour when you first activate them.  After the culture is established it will overpower the yeast in unsterilized flour and retain it's distinct character indefinitely. 

ph_kosel

Thank you for the response.

That is a very interesting point you make (regarding native yeasts in flour fed to a starter, overpowering  a particular 'imported' culture).

Can I assume you are saying that wild yeast leavens are different from region to region. BTW, I have no idea, never had the opportunity to compare them.

So, if I assume they are somewhat different, they might have different flavor profiles (or other characteristics), can I also assume that they all share basic, fundamental similarities such as yeast and lacotbacilius colonies (of one type or another) that generate acedic and lactic acids. Would they not all be 'sour' then, to some degree?

Just asking.

dobie

The folks at sourdo.com are probably much better qualified to answer such questions than I am.  I do remember reading somewhere that wild yeasts can be regional but lactobacili are less so, if I recall correctly.

I have a "finnish" culture from sourdo.com that keeps it's distinctly different color over the years.  It seems to have a different flavor/arma too, although my old tastebuds ain't what they once were.

I have taken to using the term levain as the substance that is refrigerated long-term, and starter the dough ingredient made from the levain.

What is the correct French pronunciation of levain?

I've heard le-VAN with a short "a" and I've heard people speaking French pronounce it le-VON with a short "o".

I mentioned the word Levain to a French lady and she pronounced it closer to Levan (but obviously with French enunciation). It isn't "ain" how an English speaker would pronounce it.

It's closer to the English short "o", with a long "e".

It's pronounced like the common expression "à demain"

Great example of a circular definition.

Not really.

The added data is that "demain" is in fact pronounced as "levain" (in French, as in English, having the same letters doesn't imply the same pronunciation), and the proportion of examples of people pronouncing "à demain" compared to "levain" must surpass a million to one.

Anyway, I also provided a link to the pronunciation in audio, so :P

Levain de Campagne  |  LevAn dee Cam-pan-yay  |  Country LOAF

Pain au Levain  |  Pan au LevAn  |  SOURDOUGH Bread

[I realise my transliteration might not be perfect and open to discussion but my point is the word levain is used differently]

 

 

many other words do.  Levain de Champagne translates to Leaven of Chanpagne where Champagne au Levain traslates as Chamgagne Sourdough. So right there levain means leaven and sourdough....and we also know it also means sourdough starter

All translations by Bing this time:-)

Sourdough also has another meaning in English than the sour starter and the bread.  it also means the early prospectors and settlers to Alaska and Yukon of Canada during the gold rush days because they had some sourdough starter in there shirt pockets next to their warm bodies to keep it warm so they could make sourdough bread in the winter where ever they were.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Pain+au+Levain

Sourdough Sam is the mascot of the NFL's San Franciso 49'ers where gold rush prospectors leaving from San Francisco were commonly called Sourdoughs by the locals

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Sourdough+Sam

happy baking 

I feed established starters as follows:

1 spoonful old starter+150g flour+100g water

let rise 24 hrs at room temperature

refrigerate

Thank you ph_kosel

Regular old AP flour? Also, I really would like to know the color (I'm guessing yellowish) and where you got it.

In my earlier readings about sourdough (or perhaps I should say 'wild yeast/lactobacillius cultures') I was told that they were indeed regional in species (probably the wrong term, but you know what I mean I hope) and thus, of different flavor characteristics.

Upon further research I was told quite definitely that they were all very much the same. Such is the wonder of Wikipedia.

I have only tasted the cultures I can create in my own location so I have no idea if there are differences or not (I'm not a Lab Rat nor do I have access to a microscope and I don't even know if a microscope would be the tool to use). Regardless,

Thanks

dobie

I sterilized a 5-lb bag of cheap AP flour for activating new cultures from sourdo.com.  After that I used King Arthur unbleached bread flour to feed the established culture.

flour is that high heat that sterilizes also deactivates the enzymes that break starch down into the sugars LAB and yeast can eat as well as deactivating protease enzymes plus all the other enzymes in flour, many of which we don't even know what they do, other than some break protein chains that release amino acids that create the complex flavors in bread.

I never actually EAT bread made with sterilized flour, only use it for activating new starters purchased from sourdo.com.  The objective in that case is to feed the purchased starter WITHOUT introducing other microorganisms in the flour not to achieve a nice tasting final bake.  If one uses unsterile flour one risks the native organisms in the unsterile flour competing with and overcoming and dominating those few pathetic survivors in the purchased starter which have withstood dehydration and indefinite storage.  

Once the new starter is fully activated the purchased organisms seem to easily dominate over any native organisms in unsterilized flour; I only use unsterilized flour to activate purchased starters, not to bake bread. 

I started doing it this way after asking a chef with a refined palette to sample bread made with two different purchased starters.  He found no detectable difference, as did I.  I concluded that there was a problem and solved it as best I could.  Using sterilized flour to activate purchased flour seems to help develop distinctly different cultures.  I maintain two starters, "SanFrancisco" and "Finland".  The Finland culture rises faster and has a distinctly light brownish color compared to the more palid SanFrancisco culture.

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ph_kosel on Wed, 10/28/2015 - 13:35

I mean I only use STERILIZED flour to activate purchased starters, not to bake bread.

I'm wondering what the new starter is supposed to eat if the flour been fed to it is dead and there is no sugar for the wee beasties to feast on once they wake up after getting wet again.  They have to be eating something.

I'm guessing the flour isn't really dead and there is still plenty to eat and no as sterile as we think.

Oddly, all of my starters over the years have changed over time to where ever I was living and what was baking fed to them no matter how vigorous and healthy they were when moved.  Commercial yeast or other non acid loving microbes won't take over but when i fold other starters into my base one, something I do 4-6 times a year that changes the mother too.  But just feeding it different flour over time does the same thing.

The LAB in sourdough eat maltose and the yeast eat glucose ,  Both of their foods are bound up in the flours starch carbohydrates that neither can eat.  Here is a link to a post that shows how some of the enzymes in flour break starchss into the simple sugars the wee beasties can eat.  High heat denatures the enzymes and the poor things then have little to eat

http://www.classofoods.com/page1_7.HTML

Also, LAB can eat dead yeast too - they are strange beasts

Perhaps you'd like to stop telling me how it won't work and simply try it yourself.  220F for one hour.  That's my sterilization protocol.  When you've proved to yourself that yeast will happily eat the stuff you may wish to amend your comments.