I asked my local baker for some starter that I intended to use for baking bread pastries. He told me that he didn’t have any available, but he gladly gave me another starter which he specified was “sweet” and that he used to bake croissants. He suggested that I use that one but to add a little flour to it.
Unfortunately I was in a hurry and I didn’t have time to ask for more clarification. The starter that he gave me is quite active. It more than doubled when I left it for an hour on the kitchen counter top.
Can anyone suggest what this starter may be made of and particularly why it’s said to be “sweet”?
What he gave you is likely something along the lines of pate fermentee viennoise which is commonly used in croissant or danish doughs. Unlike a sourdough starter or poolish it probably has a small amount of sugar and possibly even some butter. I will make a small batch of this the day before mixing a batch of croissant dough. If I made croissant every day, I’d just reserve some of today’s dough to add to tomorrow’s dough.
Hope this helps,
Phil
You are probably right. I forgot to mention that the mixture he gave me is fairly liquid, like thick cream soup. I am impressed seeing how fast it rises. I added some flour to it and it doubled again in one and a half hours. Very fast compared to my rye starter which takes up to six hours to rise after I feed it.
Here’s a recipe I scraped from the Boulangerie pas a pas YouTube channel. It yields about 350 g of pate and is used in a 1 kg flour croissant dough. I treat it just as I would a poolish when mixing the croissant dough. Wish I had a bakery I could cadge some pate from... Why we must bake our own out here in the provinces. Last batch of sourdough buttermilk croissant came out quite well.
T45
200
Sel
4
Sucre
10
Levure
2
Eau
120
Buerre
15
Mix 4 min @1
Mix 6 min @2
12 hour ferment
What does "levure" mean exactly. I suspect it's a raising agent, but what is it?
Levure is French for yeast. They tend to use fresh yeast over there so you would halve that for ADY.
Cheers,
Phil