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Amanda Agee's avatar

Best headline ever!

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Ed's avatar

When I was struggling last year I had happened upon a method with a stiff levain and it was the first thing that performed the way I wanted it to. Now I'm superstitious and I do an initial levain build at 100%, but then I still incorporate that into a 55% hydration firm starter, and twelve hours later I tear that up by hand, mix it into my flour mixture, and only then add water. I would 100% be here for a post comparing the performance of different levain hydrations and another post comparing levain percentages in bulk fermentation.

I'm also super lazy and even though our kitchen is cold I haven't once bothered warming the water before bulk fermentation. I just make a note of how much longer the dough takes to double when the kitchen is cold, and then I stick it in the fridge overnight. At some point I might need to be more careful with DDT and fermentation timing, but it's not like I'm going anywhere.

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