Interesting Snipet from The Rye Baker About Preferments

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Anonymous on 1 Mar 2019 at 01:21

Having a look through The Rye Baker (my go to site when planning a rye bake) and came across this recipe with the following paragraph explaining its 3 stage sponge which I thought would be interesting to share...

"Three-stage sponges are especially interesting from a technical and chemical perspective. The first stage, which generally hydrates at 100-120%, is aimed at strengthening the yeast, i.e., leavening power of the sponge. The second stage, which is much stiffer – in this case, only 57% hydrated – is designed to promote the development of the lactic acid bacteria, with the low hydration favoring the production of acetic, rather than lactic acid. Finally, the third stage, again hydrated to around 100%, brings the microorganisms back onto balance, resulting a a robust culture with well-defined acidity and solid leavening power".

Been asked many times what is the difference between a starter and a levain (or sponge). Here we see that the starter is being treated as just a seed whereas the levain builds strength and balances flavour. A starter is non specific but the levain is being designed for the bread you're making.

Three stages with the first to build the yeast population, second to build up flavour and third to balance the two.

Is this the next bread you are going to try?

 

hester

and debating what to do this week. It's a toss up between this rye recipe and a whole wheat recipe of which here is my rough sketch incorporating ideas from the sponge build above...

Whole-Wheat Sourdough Bread

 

Sponge Day 1 Evening: 120% hydration

  • 10g rye starter

  • 25g water

  • 20g whole-wheat flour

 

Sponge Day 2 Morning: 60% hydration

  • 22g sponge (12g water + 10g flour)

  • 24g water

  • 50g whole-wheat flour

Sponge Day 2 Evening: 100% hydration

  • 40g sponge (15g water + 25g flour)

  • 90g water

  • 80g whole-wheat flour

 

Final Dough Day 3 Morning: 80% hydration

  • 600g whole-wheat flour

  • 468g water

  • 12g salt

  • 120g levain

More on wholegrains from now on with venturing into bread flour only every so often. I also wish to incorporate spelt more and other ancient grains. So you will be seeing a lot more rye and non common wheat from my posts. I've got some bread flour to use up, whole-wheat and rye at the moment. Of course when there is a community bake i'll be joining in using whichever flours called for.

I'm leaning towards the whole-wheat this week simply because I did rye last week. Variety!

Will do, Hester.

Of course i'm all for adding wholegrains as well to the bread. While I do appreciate the occasional white bread (as long as it's sourdough) and white sourdough is healthier than white yeasted, I want to try to make my baking as healthy as possible. I also like a good hearty bread that fills you up and wholegrains are very tasty to-boot. So "yes" to both! Every so often i'll do a bread flour and i'll be joining in community bakes whatever the flour but want to lean towards hearty, filling, healthy sourdough.

Yes. My aim is to use the flour from ancient grains. Additions in the form of grain normally come as wholegrain anyway. But more often than not the additions in my loaves are nuts and seeds with the occasional oat or barley flakes and cracked rye.  

I would like to know which recipe that was from. I have the book and also I often refer to the website when I'm about to do a bake.

i loved his site so much i bought his book...just made the mountain rye loaf-  really tender and delicious  - good combination of rye sour and oat scald - basically a porridge rye bread

Have been really getting into rye baking recently and came across a great 100% rye sourdough that also uses a 2 stage sour...so good...its a riff on a german volkenbrot

Haven't got round to making that one yet but like the sound of it. This is one site I want to work through all the recipes. Glad we're on the same page. 

Abe, the concept of changing levain hydrations is interesting. I look forward to your take (Pro & Con) on this method.

 

Most times I follow the author. And when I don’t, I almost always wished I did. The original formula and process serves as a standard, a type of benchmark from which to venture out.

Now, on future bakes, that’s a different story.  I say tweak away...

Danny

 

I'm not Dan, but my opinion is: The first time, always follow a recipe exactly, unless you're pretty sure it's a bad recipe. And - If you're pretty sure it's a bad recipe, then never make it at all. There are thousands of good bread recipes, and therefore no excuse for wasting your time on an obviously bad one.

If it has any promise at all, then it's worth doing exactly as printed (the first time at least), in order to actually see what changes need to be made.

Law of unintended consequences is too important a factor to discount.

Stanley's recipes are always worth following. My scribblings above is not a diversion of a recipe but rather taking elements of this levain build for a completely different recipe. 

I agree with you! 

Abe, does the temperature of each stage vary, as in the Detmolder process, or is it all done by varying the hydration?

Lance

Hi Lance,

Water temperature is consistent  with all three feedings at 41°C (105°F). The temperature for the ferment is only given with the first feed (which is overnight) at 21°C (70°F). 

I have no way of measuring the temp of water when mixing nor for the ferment so for that part I just keep warm. 

Hope this helps. I've given a link to the original recipe. 

Overnight ferment is 70°F. 

105°F seems to be the standard temp of water used to mix the sponge. I've never followed this exactly as I've no way of controlling the temp of the water. 

I'm pretty sure 105 is just the warm water, added to contents at room temperature to warm them up a bit.

105 for most people feels just comfortably warm, definitely not enough to call hot. If your hot water tap only gave you 105, you'd be sure your water heater was broken.

(I'm guessing that 105 would also be a pretty poor temperature to drink coffee - cool enough to complain "This coffee has gotten cold", but definitely too warm to be "refreshing".)

Without rationale to be different, any deviation becomes suspect.

Hamelman's "Bread" is a good source for some depth on this subject.

 

There's a "Detmold method" (by whatever name, but referring to the area in Germany where it comes from).  And I guess the question boils down to "Why bother with doing sort of the Detmold method, when you could just as easily do it for real?"

Note: "Detmolder" just means "from Detmold", "Detmold style", or whatever like that.

Just taken a look. Very nice recipe, thank you for the link which is now a contender for this week's bake, and the 3 stage build looks the same as Stanley's. I'm just confused by Doc Doughs comment. 

Loving that crumb! Bread looks delicious. 

My initial guess is that Doc might be mistaken.

I think the recipe you linked to, with its multi-stage process, reminded him very strongly of the Detmolder method as described by Hamelman and others.

But maybe the recipe at your link is older than the Detmold one, or was developed independently from it. I don't know, and I don't have the bread experience to judge for myself.

I think my yoghurt maker (which has a wide range for temperature and timing settings) will have to make an appearance. Since the Hamelman recipe has the temps I'm going to opt for that one. Looks good. 

I've learned a lot today.

You can float a bowl of starter in a water bath maintained at temperature by a sous vide circulator for very precise control.

Personally I found it a challenge which, once I had succeeded, was not worth the effort to repeat.

At the moment I am sitting at 32,000 ft over Missouri and don't seem to have (on my laptop) a detailed record of my attempt at a whole wheat version of a Detmolder process.  I do remember that it wound up being a little different from the baseline version which worked well for rye; just don't remember any of the details.  If I was going to do it over I would keep track of both the pH and TTA (at least at the end of each stage), but when I was trying to master it I had not yet established a reliable way to measure TTA with any confidence (though it did motivate me to buy a really good pH meter).

3 stages which leaves out the most important part temperature!  Stage 2 is low hydration and low temperature and was the reasoning behind the low temp long storage of the NMNF rye starter.  Low hydration itself will not promote acetic acid production well unless it is also done at low temperature

Temperature is also specified for the stages 1 and 3 as well with the Detmolder Process.

I have heard of the Detmolder method, but wasn’t aware of the details. Abe’s post stimulated me to investigate the process. 

But from the post I’ve read most people’s review of their bake says that the bread is not super sour. Is this the general gist of opinion concerning this bake?

Why would a baker go to the trouble of building the levain? What is the desired goal?

I am interested to learn.

Dan

Imagine a car.

For maximum torque, do this.

For maximum horsepower, do that.

For maximum fuel economy, do the other thing.

All more or less incompatible.

 

The Detmold engineers: "OK then, we're building a car that has three different engines at the same time!" ?