Flour Power

have you make a sourdough culture (I usually use the word levain) which you store in the refrigerator and then pluck pieces from to build a recipe-specific starter in three quick-to-make stages: morning, evening, and the next morning (the day of the dough mix).

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

To take a break from baking for up to two weeks: To a clean jar with a lid, add 20g ripe starter along with 100g all-purpose flour. Add 80g room-temperature water (which will yield a slightly stiffer consistency) and mix until no dry flour remains. Cover and let sit on the counter for 1 to 2 hours to allow fermentation to get going. Place in the re

The beauty of sourdough is that once you have made your initial ferment, you can use some to make your bread, and then keep back a portion of it to use later – provided you keep refreshing it every few days. The reason you have to keep nourishing your ferment is to keep it alive; if you leave it alone, it will have nothing to feed on and start feed

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 understandin