Feeding your levain, not your dough

By putting levain in your dough you don’t feed the dough, you feed the levain. The levain gets food (the flours in the dough) and can therefore start the process of fermenting. If you look at it the other way around, you might think that adding (a lot of) levain helps the dough to rise optimally. The opposite is true.

Still lots of gluten-free recipes, even in Aran Goyoaga’s latest release The Art of Gluten-free Bread, call for an amount of levain that’s the same or even more as the amount of flour in the dough. Let that sink in. If you feed your levain 100% of its own weight, you maximize the fermentation speed and there’s zero room for error, even at lower temperatures. Putting in even more levain than the weight of flour in the dough, means you are underfeeding the levain, which results in a weak, boring, suboptimal bread. Why? Because your levain needs a lot more food to take its time to ferment and to develop flavour and yeasts. About 2,5 to 5 times more.

So why are these insane levain quantities promoted everywhere? Because it is a very easy way to create acceptable bread. Fill your dough with levain, put it straight into the refrigerator, bake the next day. No instructions needed. This is kindergarten sourdough, for the least demanding home baker. The result is that they will never understand what they are doing, because the basis is wrong. Any deviation in temperature or time will quickly cause problems for the baker. And mostly they don’t understand that what they are doing is not creating a sourdough bread, but putting sourdough in a bread. Big difference.

On top of those enormous levain quantities, some dare to advise to place the dough in a warm spot for some time or to place it in the fridge right after shaping. As if temperature has no effect on the speed of fermentation! Holy moly, those people should be banned from the internet. Instructions from decades ago, then copied and copied and never adjusted. Stop that inaccurate nonsense, quit teaching sourdough-for-dummies, and lower the amount of levain to about 25% of the flour. Then give your dough time and (literally) air. Learn to work with temperature. Let it develop gas and flavour, let it breathe!

In my upcoming book you will find in-depth info on determining the cut-off time during fermentation at different temperature and feeding levels. Need help in the meantime? Contact me and book a 1-on-1 masterclass.
.
.
.
.
#surdegsbröd #glutenfri #longfermentedsourdough #glutenfrittsurdegsbröd #glutenvrijbrood #glutenvrij #glutenvrijdesem #glutenvrijzuurdesembrood #freefromgluten #glutenfree #sourdough #glutenfreesourdough #glutenfreesourdoughbread #crumbshot #närproducerat #broodworkshop #glutenvrijbakkenworkshop #glutenfrei #glutenfreibrot #glutenfreisauerteigbrot #workshopglutenvrijbroodbakken #workshopbroodbakken #lowfodmap #gfdf #masterclass