Hi everyone - just joined this site. HI!
I have been reading lots of sourdough recipes (I follow a combo recipe from Chad Robertson of Tartine fame, and Erin Turcke). This is my blog post: http://richlerrecipes.blogspot.com/2015/07/my-journey-to-sourdough-part-2.html
My question is about starter vs leaven. Both Chad and Erin recommend making a leaven out of the starter, so I do this. But I have been reading recipes lately that say you can make bread directly with starter, and you can skip the leaven step.
Questions:
1) What is the advantage to skipping the leaven step, aside from saving time?
2) I read here on this site that the Chad method (with leaven) produces a less acidic loaf - true?
3) If my current recipe calls for 1000 g liquid (800 water, 200 leaven) - how do I adjust the proportions if I am using starter instead?
Here is info on how I keep my starter:
If I don't plan to bake for a while, I keep it in the fridge. When I know I want to bake, I take it out of the fridge about 5 days before and start feeding it again. I make the leaven the night before I want to bake, then I put the starter back in the fridge for a few more weeks until I bake again (I bake 4-6 loaves at a time).
I would appreciate any thoughts or guidance. I have been on this sourdough journey since summer of 2015.
Dvorah
There are probably many explanations on starter vs levain... The one for me is that you dont want to feed a whole lot of starter and maintain a big amount of it in the fridge. so you keep a small starter and you use it to build a levain to bake with. Also, when you build your levain, you can use the type of flour that matches your final recipe (whole wheat, rye, bread flour, AP flour...) instead of having to maintain multiple versions of starters (some people do that, e.g. have a rye starter and a separate whole wheat starter). Since you have to feed your starter before a bake anyways, i think using smaller starter to build a levain makes sense.
for maintaining your recipe hydration. a common practice is that all starters are kept at 100% hydration. that is, equal parts flour and water.
so if you take 20 grams of starter, you feed it 50 grams flour and 50 grams water, it's at a 100% hydration level. (hydration level means the ratio of water to the amount of flour)
if you have a 70% hydration recipe. you may have 800g flour, 400g levain (100% hydration), and 500g water. that way, 200g of flour and 200g of water comes from the levain for 1000g flour and 700g water which is 70%
so to answer your questions:
1) yes saves time (instead of feeding starter, then building levain with fed starter, you just feed start to user as levain), but at the cost of maintaining a bigger starter
2) the longer the starter culture gets to feed, the more acidic it gets. so if you have a big portion of starter that has aged, it will be more acidic than a levain that is just built from a small amount of starter.
3) see above on my hydration explanation. But a good systems is to have both starters and levains at 100% hydration so it's easy to calculate. there are reasons to not have 100% hydration in those, but more advanced topics there (to control acidity, change timing of maturity, etc...)
Happy baking!
James
Thank you, James! The most interesting point to me was #2 - my starter is 5 years old - I am going to experiment with my next batch of bread and not make a leaven/levain to see what the difference in taste is.
I only keep about 2-3 tbsp of starter in the fridge although I have more at the moment because I have been sharing my starter with many people so I keep having to build it up for more volume.
My starter is 50/50 white /hole wheat with a generous splash of rye ;-)
Thanks again,
Dvorah
Hi, Dvorah!
There is not really any difference, other than terminology, between a starter and a levain, or for that matter, a discard. If you took your starter, split it into two parts, and fed both, you would have two starters. This is exactly what you are doing with a levain (or leaven). The levain is simply called levain rather than starter to denote that it’s getting ready to be used in a recipe. As for discard, it is simply starter that needs to be fed.
Think of it this way: you take your starter, and split it in two. You feed one part of it, and put it back in the fridge (or next to the coffee pot, or wherever you keep it), and call it “starter”. You then take the other part, and feed it whatever your recipe calls for, and call it “levain”; or you don’t feed it and put it in the fridge to make waffles with this weekend, and call it “discard”.
As for the purpose of creating a levain to use in a recipe, it boils down to what kind of flour your starter is regularly fed, versus what kind of flour your recipe wants you to use. I feed my starter 75% unbleached AP and 25% rye flour. But if the recipe I’d like to make calls for 50% AP, 40% whole wheat, and 10% spelt, I don’t want to have to change my entire starter in order to bake the bread I’m aiming for. Using my starter as a base, I can turn its discard into the whole wheat/spelt levain/starter that my recipe calls for, without altering my original starter. If my recipe called for exactly the same flours (in exactly the same proportions) that I already use for my starter’s regular feedings, then yes, I would have no need to create a levain.
With all of that being said, even though the only real physical difference between “starter”, “levain”, and “discard” deals with how and when they’ve been most recently fed, the different terminology is helpful for keeping track of what your intended use is for each.