Levain Bread

Here's my latest endeavor. On the left is an almond bread, and on the right, an apple and sage bread. This is a recipe for a pain au levain bread, one of the staples of the French baking method that we've imported to the States. The levain (or chef, as it's sometimes called) is made the day before, using about a tablespoon of starter mixed with about a 1/2 cup of flour and three tablespoons of water. It ferments over night, quadruples in volume as it rises and then becomes the leavener for the loaf the next day. In the morning, the dough is made and allowed to rise for about four or five hours. About two thirds of the way through, the dough is folded. I chose to split the dough in half at that point and folded in the extra ingredients.

When the initial rise is over, the dough is shaped into loaves, and allowed to rest in cloth lined bowls. They proof for another two to three hours, and then you bake them off.

They turned out OK, though there's definitely room for improvement. I believe the dough was too wet. They were still a little underbaked in the middle, but fairly tasty nonetheless. You can see that the breads are quite flat, and not very rounded, particularly the one to the right, which is the apple bread. That's a sign that the dough was too wet, since it sort of "pancaked" on me. I believe that one flattened out more due to the additional moisture in the apples. The pancaking could also be due to a lack of adequate kneading. Doughs will naturally thicken when you knead them. You certainly don't want to overknead, but underkneading can be problematic as well. The bottoms were not really as browned as they should be either, but what I've read is that for home ovens, the smart thing to do is to slide the breads directly onto the bottom of the oven for the last five minutes. I'll try that next time. They didn't have much of a sourdough taste either because the recipe only calls for tablespoon of starter. I like the complexity of flavor that comes from the sourdough starter, so I think I'll stick to breads that use much more starter.

The bread was tasty though, and I was happy with how the loaves turned out.