I bake 2 loaves of country bread once a week always with slightly varying formulas and methods. This week I tried only feeding my levin once a day for the whole week and building up to the amount of levain I needed on bake day by feeding it twice before mixing into dough. Previously I had started feeding levain twice a day 3 days before bake and three times a day starting 2 days before. I tried this new method in order to minimize waist since I rarely use levain for other purposes and to go through flour less quickly. This week my bread came out very dense and cakey and I was wondering if this had anything to do with feeding levain less in lead up to bake, although there are other factors that could have lead to this result (such as 25% spelt and walnuts in dough, and doing all day autolyse in cold kitchen which I believe could have slowed down yeast production when levin was mixed in). Does anyone find that frequency of feeding leading up to day of bake drastically affect their loaf?
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Why not just feed the starter and build your levain the night before? Keep the starter in the fridge the rest of the week.
You can also accelerate a levain build by keeping it warmer for a few hours. I've done that when I forgot to prep early enough.
I leave my levain in the fridge. I take it out a couple days before wanting to use it. But when I go to feed it, I add 2 TBSP of brown/rye flour mix or all-purpose flour and 2 TBSP of water.
This was there is a smaller amount of levain, and you do not have to throw any out before using.
Most likely the reason your loaf didn’t turn out well and was dense was related to the cool temperature the dough was at during bulk fermentation. Also an all day autolyse sounds excessive unless the dough was kept at fridge temperature to really slow down the amylase from causing excessive starch attack. If the dough is mostly white flour then 30-60 mins of autolyse is all that is needed. Maybe a couple of hours if it is mostly whole grain. If you need to do a longer autolyse then get it cold and refrigerate or add salt, a saltolyse which is another way for slowing the amylase down.
Benny