I introduced a slight hiccup in this book by having most recipes use an optional 100 grams of refrigerated levain. The recipes work with or without it (but they taste better with it!). Using this 100 grams of sourdough to flavor the loaf will slightly change the baker’s percentages in the recipes compared with not using it. To ease the

Your freshly mixed levain weighs 450 grams. Each recipe in this book uses either 50 grams / ¼ cup or 100 grams / ½ cup of this culture. When it’s time to refresh the culture, use the same container as its permanent home. Don’t wash out the container; just remove all but 50 grams / ¼ cup of what is left in there, add more flour and water, and mix by

At the store, you may find rye flour labeled either “light rye,” “dark rye,” and, less frequently, “whole rye.” Dark and whole rye flours can be used interchangeably in my recipes.

used two pan sizes in my recipe testing for open-pan breads. The smaller pan, made by USA Pan, is nonstick and measures 8½ by 4½ by 2¾ inches. The product description says “1-pound loaf pan,” but my one-loaf recipes make a little more than 2 pounds of dough. The loaf rises high above the rim of this pan, and I like the effect of that. The bottom

I tried a million and one single- or two-feed starter builds for the mix using my refrigerated levain as the seed, and either the rise wasn’t up to a par and it needed added yeast or the flavor was too sour. It’s not enough to simply make the bread rise well. It should taste good too.

We’re looking for that just-ripe point where it has the leavening power to ferment the dough. It’s also going to impart a balanced complexity of fermented flavors without being too sour. The sour would come if there was an excess of fermentation in the levain itself, like if we were to wait longer to mix dough from it.

These 100 percent whole-grain breads don’t rise too much above the bread pan, so don’t be disappointed by that—it’s the way they are.

keeping with the French version, this loaf has a rustic look and a rougher blend of flours than a pure-white city bread. The flour blend of a country bread is up to the baker, and the leavening will be entirely or mostly from a levain.

If you are using the refrigerated levain, I found it works well to include it in the autolyse mixture—it takes a long time for its yeast to wake up and it integrates easier at this stage.