SOURDOUGH LEVAIN

Thursday morning I fed both my starters and made two more Levains.

One from the rye starter and one from the white.

Left them covered on the counter (The little balls of dough came up to just under the 200ml mark), and when I got home from work they had more than doubled.

Started two 1000g batches of sourdough Thursday night.

I added the levain (See recipe below) to

630g of water (63% ) and used my fingers to break it up in the water.

Added 1000g of flour and 30g of salt and 1g of yeast.

Used the Autolyze – Stretch and Fold Method.

I go by feel with 20 to 30 minute rests in between each of the stretch and folds.

According to Amy Scherber (founder of Amy’s Bread) commercial bakeries always add a small amount of yeast to their sourdough breads to insure constituency. My next batch I won’t bother with the yeast because my starter is so active it really isn’t necessary.

One went into the fridge after the last stretch and fold

(for a long cold fermentation)

and the other was left out from 8:30 PM until 4:00 AM Friday morning.

Baked five baguettes and

three “Claude”(a little four year old who loves baguettes) size baguettes.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Earlier bake this week. First time using the Levain.

I’ve been using Amy Scherber’s directions for my sourdough starter for years now.

But I have never actually made one of her bread recipes.

Decided I would bake a version of her Country Sourdough .

So I fed my white starter again Tuesday and used some of the discard in her Levain.

Source: Amy’s Bread

55g discard
55g water
142g of flour

Mix together and let rest for 20 minutes.
Do a couple of stretch and folds.
Should form a nice little ball of dough.
Leave covered until doubled.
It should double in 8 hours.
Mine only took 5 hours.

According to the instructions, the Levain should take around 8 hours to double.

I was planning on using it Wednesday morning to make the dough.

But both my Starter and the Levain had doubled in 5 hours. So I went ahead and started the dough Tuesday night and left if out on the counter overnight and the dough was ready to use around 4:00 AM Wednesday morning.