I'm planning a dough that requires 2 levains today: 1 125% hydration AP levain and the other 83% rye.
The rye build calls for:
- Whole Rye Flour 100%
- water 83%
- mature culture 5%
I used mature 125% AP starter to seed this rye levain. Can you build a rye levain in a single feeding off of an AP starter?
Thanks,
Josh
It depends on how much of a purist you are but it's only 5% and will be perfectly okay.
And it depends if you're making the bread for someone who is staying completely away from wheat. That's the only reason I can think of to have a 100% rye starter (well, other than the purist thing).
That would be the Hamelman pain au levain with mixed starters. This is suggested to be a set of 2 stage builds, one for each levain. Which I would recommend. Split the total amount of levain ingredients in half, and feed the entire requirement of base starter to the first build for each.
However, I wouldn't expect a 125% hydration levain to be robust enough to perform the role of a stiff starter for the 83% build, if that is what you are driving at. I'd opt to, and in fact do, use a stiffer base starter for the stiff rye levain.
Either way, experimentation is good and if it works the way you have it organized, then you will have learned a new trick to employ and maybe inform us all about.
just finished kneading with my 1 stage build levains. The base levain is pretty robust but i'm not sure it really built a very strong rye levain -- i wonder if you really need to convert the AP levain to a rye levain over a couple of feedings (a 2 stage build as you suggest).
Where do you see the instructions for the 2 stage build?
Thanks,
josh
your point is well taken. 5g of high hydration starter has a lot less pre-fermented flour then 5g of stiff starter. The recipe for the rye sourdough build assumes a rye levain as input. So if you wanted to use a liquid levain as seed for a rye sourdough build you would have to add more liquid levain and less water.
In my 2nd edition it is across pp 148-149.
Now, I have made this bread w/o the two stage build too, when all I had to go by was someone's writeup somewhere on the internet. That was before I had the book, a recent purchase for me. At first I found the organization of the book a little confusing, but with time and constructive input from others on TFL, the book became less opaque to me.
I mostly use my 75% hydration mixed flour levain for most bakes, but I will also use it as the base starter for any other hydration or flour-type levain. And it is robust enough for any and all levain hydrations and flour type that I've yet come across.
For the 125% levain, you should see modest growth and small "soapy" bubbles on top. After a second build, more modest growth and a frothy set of bubbles on top. For the rye levain, you will also see modest growth, and through the side of a clear vessel, there will be a network of very consistent bubbles throughout, especially after the second build. The rye levain will mound on top.
Don't expect either of these levains to behave like a ~100% hydration build. They just will not duplicate that level of volume growth.
And just a note on levains in general - a good portion of what we read about and many actually practice involves a 2 or 3 stage build, rather than an all-in-one build. "not that there's anything (really) wrong with that" either.