Tag: Flour

Levain Starter – Evolutions In Bread By Ken Forkish

A few months ago I decided to begin maintaining a starter. To that point I’d avoided it, partly because I didn’t want Another Living Thing to maintain, partly because the idea of throwing away starter seemed wasteful, and partly because it just felt like it was going to be a messy and unnecessary hassle.

Hanging with the salsa.

The flip side of maintaining a starter would be that it would allow for more interesting things to try with breadmaking. It would also add another “color” to my available “palette”. The end product could be better tasting, better for us, and keep longer before spoilage. Ultimately I read enough intriguing starter-based recipes that I decided to give maintaining a starter a try so I took the leap.

I wanted a starter recipe that wouldn’t consume or waste much flour. I also wanted a starter recipe I could mostly ignore after it was finished. I settled on Ken Forkish’s Levain recipe from Evolutions In Bread. The entire process requires one week and 550 grams of flour.

Creating the starter is pretty simple really. Weigh the container and write that number down. Every 24 hours some amount (by weight) of the contents of the jar will be discarded and then the container will be fed a small amount of fresh water and flour. I made the decision ahead of time to mill all of the whole wheat flour I was going to need, 250 grams total. That way I wasn’t getting the mill out for the first few days when it was time to discard and feed. The process felt very easy and pretty bulletproof — I think that fresh milled whole wheat contains enough nutrients and enough bacteria/enzymes/assorted microbes and whatnot that kicking off the new tiny ecosystem basically took care of itself.

The recipe it calls for 250 grams of starter as the end product. I “shorted” the final feeding and I didn’t see any adverse effect. I did that because I wanted to be able to pull a smaller amount out of the jar each week and still keep things fresh and lively with smaller feedings. If I want to build up a large quantity of starter it takes a little longer but I’m fine with that.

I maintain 150 grams of starter in a 393 gram jar (weighed with no lid). Each week I take a small spatula and scrape/pour out 100 grams for bread baking. I then add 50 grams of bottled water and 50 grams of bread flour to the container, scrape down the sides, and stir it up. I put the lid back on and let it sit on the counter for 1-2 hours, until it starts to show some signs of life. Then it goes into the back corner of the refrigerator for another week. I store yeast in a tupperware-type container on top of the starter. Everything is in one place and ideally staying fairly cold.

As for the container – it became clear pretty quickly that straight sides are a good thing and a threaded jar is a bad thing. Straight sides because it’s much easier to get into and scrape down the jar when there’s no “neck”. Threads just gather crud and rapidly clog. I purchased a 6-pack of the Weck 743 jars and split it with a friend who was also making a new starter. (At the time the total cost was ~$6.50 per jar for six.) I use them without the gasket. They’re nice somewhat heavy jars made of thick glass. The lid just sits on top and it’s plenty secure.

Final thought: Evolutions in Bread is a great book. Highly recommended.

A 50/50 Boule With Yecora Rojo

Inspired by this “Yecora Rojo Sourdough Breads (No Knead Version too)” recipe on Breadtopia, I thought I’d try a non-sourdough version that I sort of crossed with my basic No Knead recipe.

The recipe is 200 grams King Arthur Bread Flour, 200 grams fresh-milled Yecora Rojo wheat flour, 336 grams cool water (84% hydration), 8 grams kosher salt (2%), and 1/4 tsp instant (not rapid-rise) yeast. Combine all in a bowl and mix until it’s a homogenous mass. Cover and leave on the counter.

I started the dough at 7pm the day before baking. At 11pm the dough was looking pretty feisty and had about doubled, so I did some Rubaud folds and put the container into the refrigerator, mostly because I preferred sleep over handling bread at that hour.

I did two more Rubaud folds at 1am and 4am, each time returning the dough to the refrigerator. At 4am the dough was still fairly shaggy but it was coming together. I removed the dough from the refrigerator at 6am and did coil folds at 6am, 7am, and 8am.

The dough was smooth and handled well after the 8am coil fold so I moved it to a covered banneton. At 9am I preheated the oven and our Le Creuset bread oven to 460F. At 10am the dough went onto a parchment and was slashed, then moved over to the bread oven. I reduced the temperature to 450F and baked the dough for 20 minutes covered, then 22 minutes uncovered. (The same time and process that I use for No Knead bread, though most times I’ll just go directly into the Le Creuset or a dutch oven rather than starting on parchment.) Cool on a baking rack.

The 84% hydration matches the Breadtopia recipe. The 1/4 tsp instant yeast matches my normal No Knead recipe. The bread measured 205F when I removed it from the oven which (again) is in-line with Breadtopia.

The bread was very moist. It had a decently open crumb, though it wasn’t quite as open as the pictures on Breadtopia. My feeling is that the dough could have possibly used another round or two of coil folds, but that was going to put the timing really close to when we needed to take it across town.

I was happy with the crust too, it had a nice bite to it but not “too much”. The next time around I’m going to try a little less flour in the banneton — I was probably too concerned with the dough easily releasing from the banneton so I may have overdone it a bit.

I don’t normally drop breads that I haven’t tested at all into a group setting, but I was reasonably confident everything had worked out and the bread was well received. So that was good.

The next time I’ll probably move the dough to the refrigerator after a shorter initial room temperature rise, then incorporate coil folds as soon as the dough will allow it. It might be the right answer is to do some Rubaud folds in the first hour prior to refrigerating overnight, then moving the dough back to the counter in the morning and using coil folds until the dough is ready.

Yecora Rojo is a Hard Red Spring wheat variety developed in the 1970’s. It’s my understanding that it’s used by some well-known bakeries and in flour blends for “artisan breads”. Last week I was buying wheat berries and Rogue de Bordeaux was not available, so I added Yecora Rojo to the Breadtopia shopping cart. I’m glad I did. It (predictably) functions well as an artisan bread flour. Based on one bake it’s not finicky to work with. The taste is not assertive and I think even people who Don’t Like Wheat Bread would eat it, especially if the percentage of Yecora Rojo was cut back to 20% or so.

Happy baking.