Friday, November 29, 2013

Building a Stiff Levain

Up until this point in time I have only been working with a liquid levain sourdough when baking. This weekend however, the bread I'm baking requires a stiff levain. To fast track this I converted a postion of my liquid levain into a stiff levain by calculating the correct amount of flour I needed to add to bring the ratios from 100% hydration, down to 60%. Initially I was super dubious as to whether this would actually work. 60% hydration felt really dry and I wondered whether the levain would have enough "breathing room" to actually live. It proved me wrong and went mad. It has been growing way more actively than the liquid levain, it's quite exciting. Last night I fed it again, and this morning it was bursting at the glad wrap seams, so I broke some off to store in the fridge for next time, and fed it up again to incorporate into my build tonight for my Fig and Hazlenut Sourdough for thanksgiving.
Stiff Levain Evening
Stiff Levain 12 hrs later

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