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Pan d’oro

Can you imagine I had never had pan d’oro (literally “gold bread”, also spelled pandoro) until I took the Artisan III workshop at SFBI last summer? I had seen pictures of it but never seen one “in the flesh”, much less tasted it. Didier Rosada, our instructor, told me that pan d’oro was excellent and that he preferred it to panettone.
Better than panettone? I love panettone, so I couldn’t imagine that I would ever say the same thing. But we made both panettone and pan d’oro during the class and, lo and behold, pan d’oro has become my favorite. It is light and delicate and it has great aromas, thanks to all the preferments.
Plus, even though it is traditionally a holiday “bread”, mostly eaten in Italy during Christmas and New Year, its star shape makes it a gorgeous addition to any party table. It is served dusted with confectioner’s sugar, as can be seen on this picture taken during the class.

The reason mine is still in its birthday suit on the first picture is that it went straight from the cooling rack to the freezer. Some bakers say that, if well wrapped, it can keep for a month or longer at room temperature, but Didier has seen mold develop that way and told us that, if we couldn’t make it one or two days before the intended date of consumption (which would be the best), then we should freeze it. So freeze it I did.

Four things you need to know before you decide to make a pan d’oro:

Three different doughs go into the final dough. All need to ferment at 80ºF/27ºC. So before doing anything, check to see how you’d go about maintaining this temperature in your kitchen in the winter. It could be that your oven (turned off but with the light on) offers the perfect environment or that you can let your doughs rise next to your furnace and that they will be fine. I used the proofbox the Man built for me last year out of a storage plastic box equipped with a light bulb and a thermostat. Steve B. from Bread Cetera kindly gave us the idea and provided detailed explanations on how to go about building this home proofer. Thank you, Steve! It works like a charm and I use it frequently in the wintertime when the temperature in my kitchen never rises above 64ºF/18ºC.
In making the pan d’oro, except for the temperature issue, timing is everything. You need to make yourself a time-line and stick to it like glue. As Didier says, with other artisan breads, you can relax – within certain limits, of course, briefly think of something else, go pour yourself a cup of coffee while the mixer does the work. Not so with the pan d’oro: the preferments must reach maturity at the same time and since the final dough can overdevelop in the blink of an eye (because of all the preferments), you need to watch it like a hawk.
Since it is a high-sugar dough, you need to use either osmotolerant instant yeast (SAP Instant Gold for instance) or 15 to 20% more of your regular instant yeast than the quantity indicated below (according to Didier, that works fine also but I haven’t tried it as I had bought SAP Instant Gold from the King Arthur store when I attended Jeff Hamelman’s Whole Grains workshop in Vermont this past October).
Didier recommends cooling the pan d’oro on a screen if you want it to keep its beautiful star shape. So the Man went to the hardware store and got whatever he needed to make a screened cooling rack that he then set between two chairs. He was a bit afraid that it would come loose under the combined weight of the loaves and that all the beautiful pane d’oro would come crashing to the floor but it held fast.

As you can see from the picture (please ignore my grandchildren’s little red kaleidoscope which had rolled under the table. I hadn’t seen it but the camera did!), there is only one true pan d’oro and the other loaves look different. That is because I wasn’t sure I was going to actually succeed making a pan d’oro.
So I only bought one pan d’oro pan (from amazon). For the others, I used a kouglof pan (which a kindly blog friend sent to me from France last year) and a brioche pan I must have had for the past forty years. For the four little ones, I used muffin pan liners.
Right off the bat, I can tell you that the little ones were very disappointing. Forget the idea of making tiny individual pane d’oro. They just aren’t the same (probably because the ratio of crust to crumb is so different that it totally changes the taste).

The tiny black speckles are the vanilla seeds

The kouglof-shaped pan d’oro has yet to be sliced open but we did sample the brioche one yesterday (it was heavenly) and here is how it looks inside…

…as compared to the crumb of the one we made in class using the pan d’oro mold:

Because of the shape of the brioche pan, I didn’t get the same lift as I did with the one baked in the pan d’oro mold. So the crumb is probably a bit denser. Didier had told us that it would happen but that it was still fine to bake pan d’oro in this type of mold if we didn’t have the regular ones. And indeed it was.

So, back to the time-line: the pan d’oro needs to proof overnight – @ 70ºF/21ºC for 10 to 12 hours, @ a higher temperature, a bit less time, @ a lower one, it can take up to 16 hours before it domes.

In my case I knew I was going to proof it overnight at 70ºF in the proofbox and I knew I had to bake it in the morning of the day after or at the latest in the very early afternoon as I had to go out later on.
I decided I would try to get it into the proofer at around 9 PM. Working backwards from there, I calculated that taking into account mixing and fermenting time I needed about 11 hours to get everything ready.
I thus started with the levain feed at around 10:00 AM and used the following time-line:

Feed the levain and leave it to ferment for 3 to 4 hours @80 to 85ºF/27 to 29ºC
Make the first dough (using the levain) and let it ferment 2 hours @80ºF/27ºC
Thirty minutes later, make the second dough (using instant yeast) and let it ferment one and a half hour @80ºF/27ºC (it is essential that it be ready as the same time as the first dough)
One hour and a half after mixing the second dough, mix the third dough (using both the first and the second doughs) and let it ferment 2 to 2 ½ hours @80ºF/27ºC until it is 3 ½ to 4 times its initial volume
Make the final dough (using the third dough and all the other ingredients as indicated below)
Let it ferment one hour @80ºF/27ºC and give it a fold
Let it ferment one more hour @80ºF/27ºC, divide and shape
Proof overnight until the top of the dough reaches more or less the top of the mold
Bake and cool.

Ingredients (for three pane d’oro):
For the levain (total weight needed: 130 g)
45 g unbleached all-purpose flour
22.5 g water
63 g mature white starter (100% hydration)

For the first dough (total weight needed: 325 g)

90 g unbleached all-purpose flour
45 g water
36 g eggs, beaten
22 g sugar
130 g levain

For the second dough (total weight needed: 106 g)

55 g unbleached all-purpose flour
16 g water
22 g eggs, beaten
11 g sugar
1.1 g osmotolerant instant yeast (or up to 1.3% regular instant yeast)

For the third dough (total weight needed: 570 g)

81 g unbleached all-purpose flour
36.5 g eggs, beaten
16.25 g sugar
5 g butter, at room temperature
325 g first dough
106 g second dough

For the final dough (total weight 1500 g)

300 g unbleached all-purpose flour (inexplicably and even though my calculations were accurate – they were double-checked by the Man who is a math wizard – I ended up adding twice 50 g to this amount as I was getting a batter, not a dough, after the first third of the eggs was added. I knew it was going to happen within certain limits but the dough was way over and could not have been rescued without the addition of some flour)
225 g eggs, beaten
144 g sugar
15 g liquid honey
6 g salt (I added another pinch after putting it the additional flour)
570 g third dough
225 g butter, at room temperature
15 g cocoa butter (I didn’t have any, so I did as Didier suggested and used white chocolate chips, crushed. He says it helps make nice holes in the crumb but can also be omitted)
1 vanilla pod, sliced open and seeds scraped out (you only use the seeds)

Method:

Mix the levain and let it ferment as indicated above in step 1 of the time-line
Mix the fist dough and let it ferment as indicated in step 2 (low gluten development)

All the videoclips were filmed during the workshop
Mix the second dough and let it ferment as indicated in step 3 (low gluten development as well)
Mix the third dough and let it ferment as indicated in step 4
Cream the butter incorporating as much air as possible (that’s what will give its fluffiness to the pan d’oro); when done, add the vanilla seeds and the cocoa butter or white chocolate chips, if using; mix until incorporated and reserve (at room temperature).
Mix the final dough. This step is very delicate as the ingredients must go in in the prescribed order, i.e. first the flour and salt, then half of the eggs, then one third of the sugar (no water at all), mix some. When incorporated and as gluten develops, add the second third of the sugar and a bit of the eggs (so that the sugar doesn’t draw too much water from the dough), mix again.
When incorporated and as gluten develops further, add the last of the sugar and the remaining eggs. Mix 3 minutes at first speed, then add the honey (for flavor and to keep the crumb moist), then go for one touch of second speed. Didier explained that, by doing it this way, the dough acquires strength despite almost 30% of sugar, lots of eggs and, at the end, a lot of butter. If we tried to make it adding all the ingredients in one step, il would never work, just as if you suddenly put five bags of flour on someone’s shoulders, the person would collapse. By doing it by steps, you not only build up the strength, you also build up the flavors.
So before you add the butter, make sure the dough is pretty strong. Go back to first speed until it is smooth and you get the gluten structure you want. If the dough starts to collapse, it means you put too much sugar at once. You can then keep mixing but you risk overheating the dough when the gluten is fully developed.
When you do add the butter, do it on first speed.

When all is incorporated and the dough cleans the bowl, take it out to a bin (or a dough bucket) and let it ferment for 2 hours as indicated in the time-line, step 6, with a fold at the end of the first hour

Divide at 500 g in a tight ball (if using a kouglof or brioche mold, divide at 450 g. That’s what I did and that’s why I had dough left over to make the small pane d’oro)

Proof overnight as indicated in the time-line, step 8

Bake in 325ºF/163ºC oven for 40 to 45 minutes (with only 2 seconds of steaming at the beginning, i.e. a few sprays of water)

Invert on a screen to cool

Sprinkle confectioner’s sugar on the pan d’oro before serving.

Now I know all this sounds terribly complicated and intimidating and as I was mixing the third dough (especially when it started turning into a batter), I truly started wondering why I was doing this to myself and then the dough started to coalesce and it finally reached the point where I was happy with it and I set it to rise through the night.
But frankly I had no clue whether or not it would rise. I was hopeful and concerned at the same time. That night, I must have dreamed of the pan d’oro because it is the first thing I thought of upon waking up! But everything had worked out and the pane d’oro all looked perky and in the end, I really like the way they came out. Relatively speaking, making the pan d’oro is a little bit like childbirth. You don’t necessarily enjoy the process but you love the result!

The pan d’oro goes to Susan, from Wild Yeast, for Yeastpotting.

Egg-in-a-cradle

I had some leftover pâte fermentée (old dough) from the Chestnut Flour Bread and I didn’t feel like freezing it. So instead I baked 4 little rolls and I made myself this comfort food (I was by myself for dinner). Now that I have tried it, I’ll have to do it again… and again. It is just delicious (and very simple to make. If you don’t have pâte fermentée or don’t feel like baking, just cut up a fat baguette or smallish batard into as many mini-logs as you need, remove some of the crumb and you are in business).
I had shaped and scored the rolls in different ways as I didn’t know which one would be easier to turn into an eggcup.

The fan shape?

The purse?

The tulip?

The tulip (i.e. the one with an X-shaped score) turned out to be the most convenient to open up and hollow out.

What you need is this:
bread + fresh eggs + crème fraîche (now that I have attended a cheesemaking class, I make my own and quite frankly you don’t need to take the class to know how. You just need the culture which you can get here and a way to keep the cream and the culture warm and snug for 12 hours) + some chives (from the garden or the window sill) + some grated Parmesan cheese.

You hollow out the bread, pour in two spoonfuls of crème fraîche, add some salt and freshly ground pepper, cisel some chives over it, break in the egg (if the egg is too large, the white will overflow. Just wipe out the surplus), top with grated Parmesan cheese and bake at 400ºF for about 10 minutes (if necessary, turn on the broiler for a minute or two to brown the top). (I overcooked mine by 1 minute but it was still very very yummy!). Enjoy!

This Egg-in-a-cradle goes to Susan, from Wild Yeast, for Yeastpotting.

The Ghosts of Thanksgiving Past: Leftovers

After a leftover lunch -always a treat- on Friday, everything (and by that, I mean everything but the cranberry sauce and the cranberry relish) went into the making of one big meatloaf (which has been frozen and will go to my daughter’s family of seven) and 12 small ones (which we already tucked into and which were delicious with cranberry sauce), plus one huge pot of soup.
Half of the leftover turkey was put into the food processor together with the roasted sweet potatoes, the roasted garlic cloves and the roasted onions, the cornbread-cranberry stuffing and three slices of raw smoked bacon that we also had left over (I had draped some over a pork tenderloin the night before Thanksgiving).
Once finely chopped, it was mixed with two beaten eggs, transferred to one big bread pan and a sheet of twelve small silicone ones, and baked at 350ºF for about one hour. I didn’t add salt as everything, but the eggs, was already seasoned.
Any turkey leftover can be baked that way as long as you use at least some dark meat (more flavorful and less dry) and some kind of moistener (here I used the left over sweet potatoes but in case you have none left, some applesauce would do the trick as long as you have some starch -here cornbread cranberry stuffing but rehydrated crumbs would work too- to hold the thing together with the help of the eggs).

The other half of the turkey was cut into small pieces (except for the carcass and the bones which will be used for stock) and went into a big pot together with fresh butternut squash, peeled and cut, all the other leftover roasted vegetables (parsnips, turnips and white potatoes), some of the leftover asparagus, mushroom broth (I had rehydrated dry mushrooms to make gravy two days before), all of the lemon barley stuffing, all of the leftover drippings (except for the fat which had been removed) and lots of water -broth would have been be better but I didn’t have any- with salt, pepper, bay leaves, star anise and two inches of fresh ginger (peeled). It boiled for a while. I let it cool overnight.
This morning, I skimmed the surface to remove the thin layer of fat as well as all the hazelnut bits (from the barley stuffing) which had floated to the surface and will be put to another use. We had a bowl for lunch (with fresh baby spinach leaves just dropped into the hot soup) and the rest has been frozen by portions.

Anything can go into the making of this hearty soup. If you don’t have leftover barley, throw some pearled barley (or a cooked grain) into the pot or put some cubed slices of sourdough bread in the bowls and pour the soup over it when ready. Use whatever herb or spices you have on hand, add some other stuff from the refrigerator.
One of the best soups I ever made is one I will never be able to reproduce as I can’t remember what went into it, except the whole (rather meager) contents of my fridge that night (save for the baking soda, the mustard and the milk!) and that included leftover stew and pain d’épices (gingerbread). Needless to say, that soup has acquired a fame of legendary proportions in my kids’ minds with the passing years and they still long for it…

Meet the Baker: Gérard Rubaud

Having met with several artisan bakers over the past year and a half (since I retired from my other life), I am ready to vouch that they are a breed apart. They exhibit none of the greyness, sameness, run-of-the-mill-ness which seems to fall like a cloak over many of us as we grow up. They come out as real characters, intense, focused and passionate.Now are they bakers because they are passionate? Or passionate because they are bakers? Or both?
To borrow a phrase from George Stapledon as quoted by Andrew Whitney in Bread Matters: The State of Modern Bread and a Definitive Guide to Baking Your Own, bread which, at its most elementary, comes from the soil, has the “ability to enliven”. It is alive (or it was before it went into the oven) and it needs to be coaxed into being. To my mind here lies the challenge and with it, the kindle that fires the baker’s soul.

But all bakers are not created alike. Some are always on the lookout for new techniques, others wax poetic on the music of the cooling loaves, others yet talk about their wild yeast starter or levain as if it were their favorite child or their most valuable asset. French baker Gérard Rubaud, from Gérard’s Breads of Tradition in Westford, Vermont, is and does all of that and more.
More than an artisan (although he is that too, definitely), he is an artist who plays his levain with the same dexterity and virtuosity as Yehudi Menuhin played the violin. With minute changes in temperature, fermentation times and hydration rates, he gets a wide array of subtle flavors, giving his bread a complexity that most bakers can only dream of. He is the prince of aromas.
No wonder the ten stores he supplies locally – among them City Market in downtown Burlington, Healthy Living in South Burlington and Richmond Cornermarket in Richmond as well as CSA Intervale – can never stock enough of his fragrant loaves.

Gérard sees the baker as a poet, not a movie star. Calm and solitude are the two ingredients that feed his creativity. As he works, he alternates between silence, music and Radio-Canada’s ad-free nightly broadcast of programs from France and other French-speaking countries. A fervent believer in simplicity as the road to excellence, he makes only one dough but strives for perfection. He wants each of his loaves to carry the bouquet which is his signature. The aromas which waft up from his mixers when he mixes either the firm levain or the final dough are heavenly. I could get totally hooked on them. I wish there were a way I could reproduce them for this blog!

Apprenticed as a baker at the age of 13, Gérard got his baking & pastry diploma (CAP or “certificat d’études professionnelles en boulangerie-pâtisserie”) early on.

(In this videoclip, Gérard explains that the exam was a competitive one and that, as indicated on his diploma, he won first place. When he was young, it was more important for him to win first place than to get the diploma itself. As he added a few minutes later off-camera, in each district the youngster who won first place was awarded a trip to Paris financed by a major margarine manufacturer!)
However, when he was a youngster, the mountains held more appeal for him than bread (although he vividly remembers the fragrance of the huge loaves baked each week at the mountain farm where he was sheltered during World War II). He skied in the winter and mountaineered in the summer, while working as a baker to finance these two hobbies, a way of life he reproduced later on when he was a member of the French national ski team in the winter and took tourists on tours of the Mont-Blanc in the summer. He soon became a ski racing coach as well but then he got married and his life changed.
He started working for Rossignol, the French ski manufacturer, and from then on devoted his enthusiasm and energy to making sure the racers had the best possible skis to help them win. He sees a lot of similarities between the job he did then and the one he does now. Then as now, he strove for excellence. Working closely with the racers, he also developed invaluable communication skills which serve him well today in his relationship with his students.
For Gérard isn’t satisfied with producing the best possible bread. He also wants to make sure his knowledge of the levain is passed on to the next generation. To that effect, he takes on students (usually bakery owners or instructors in baking schools and culinary institutes from the world over) whom he coaches on the intricacies of what is commonly called “sourdough baking”, a misnomer in Gérard’s case as his bread is anything but sour.
His classes run 5 or 6 days and the price ($2350) includes room and board as well as some small tools he sees not only as necessary but as most valuable for the baker (a manual grinder for the grain fed to the levain, a small thermometer and a small scale). He only takes about 2 students a month, unless they come in a pair. Then he might take four (there is a discount for pairs). He likes teaching partners because, working in shifts, they may find a way to keep their bakery open 7/7, something he sees as a social duty for a village baker. He did it himself for a while but there was only one of him and the relentless pace almost killed him. Since the stroke he suffered in March 2004 (which left him paralyzed for 5 months and unable to work for more than a year), he limits himself to making bread 5 days a week.

Manual grinder used by Gérard to mill flour for his levain
(Can be found online at Lehman’s Hardware – reference number: 30347120)

What brought Gérard from the steep slopes of his native Savoie to the gentle hills of Vermont? It is a long story. Suffice it to say that he went quickly up the corporate ladder at Rossignol and ended up as president of the company’s North-American division. The job took him to Vermont when the ski giant built a factory in the state. He and his family thrived there for a dozen years or so but at age 47, he decided that time had come to do something else with his life. After a brief stint as the owner of a restaurant and vacuum-cooking facility, he went back to his first profession and opened up a bakery on a large tract of land he had purchased near Burlington.

He set it up on the model of an 18th century French bakery, working from old engravings to have a local carpenter and a woodworking buff he knew from his restaurant days reproduce the equipment commonly found at the time, save for the mixers which, while old, obviously do not predate electricity! By opting for old-fashioned equipment, he wasn’t trying to be quaint or to make a statement. He just chose what he deemed best for bread and in his opinion, wood is best because it allows the dough to breathe without perspiring.

Bakery illustration from Diderot’s mid-eighteenth century encyclopedia
(found here on the Web)

Gérard has built two wood-fire ovens with the help of a local bricklayer but although the smaller one (designed for week-end use before he went back to baking full-time) is in good working order, it cannot handle the number of loaves he needs to produce daily (around 170). The large one weighs 50 tons and if shut off, needs ten and a half day to come back to the point where it is hot enough to bake bread.
Gérard uses the wood from his woods (mostly maple) which a forester selects and a lumberman cuts down for him, paying close attention to environmental and aesthetic issues. Since landscaping is another of his passions (and he did a great job around the bakery and the main house), he is not likely to overlook these two considerations.

When I arrived at Gérard’s bakery, night was falling and he was feeding the levain, using a blend of all-purpose flour (which he says doesn’t count, flavor-wise, but acts as a filler) and one third each of whole grain wheat, rye and spelt which he had ground less than thirty minutes before, using a manual grinder, and then sifted. In his experience, using freshly milled flour is not only the best but also the only way to capture most of the wild yeasts packed in the kernel. He has also found that using an electrical grinder produces a coarser flour which is less propitious to yeast growth in the levain.
Gérard mixed the levain with the freshly milled flour blend, some all-purpose flour and water in the old Hobart which he uses only for this purpose (it wouldn’t be gentle enough for the dough).

Here is the levain after the first feeding:

and seven hours later:

Before mixing the final dough, Gérard grinds a larger quantity of whole wheat, spelt and rye berries (using an electric grinder this time) to add additional layers of flavor to his bread. He does it right before mixing a new batch to make sure most of the wild yeasts will still be present.

When the levain is ripe, Gérard mixes these just-milled flours, all-purpose flour and water in the big mixer, then lets the whole thing rest for 30 to 40 minutes (autolyse). The process helps develop the gluten, making it possible to reduce mixing time later (thus preserving the flavors). Then he adds the levain and the salt.

The mixer is a sixty-year old German machine on which Gérard has disabled the second speed setting (to make sure his students will not be tempted to use it). It continuously folds the dough, reproducing the baker’s age-old gesture. There is something serene about the way it works and watching the dough slowly come together is a real pleasure. In the above videoclip, Gérard is cutting up some of the ripe levain for the first batch of dough and adding it to the “autolysed” (fully hydrated) flour while the Hobart is mixing the remainder for the next one. (A portion of the levain is always reserved from one feeding to the next).

After the mixing, the dough goes into the big wooden box for the first fermentation (which can last up to 4 hours). It is poured from the box onto the bench and folded when the box is required for the next batch:

After another resting period comes the weighing…

…and the pre-shaping:

Then Gérard gives the bread its final shape:

…and lets it proof (ferment) for up to three hours depending on the temperature inside the bakery and the quality of the levain. He uses 35% levain for 100% flour (except when it is cold out, then he uses more levain) but he says he would have a slightly different approach if he worked with a partner. Right now he does whatever is needed to give him enough time to mix and bake two or three successive batches by himself without running the risk of overproofing the dough.

When the time comes to put the bread in the oven, he scores it delicately, holding the blade sideways so as not to get deep “ears” which he says distract from the taste.

Gérard adds steam then the loaves bake for 30 to 40 minutes at around 450 F/230C (the oven is hotter though for the first batch).

The goal of the first fermentation is to develop the flavors while the second one (the proofing) creates the gas. A good hydration rate (Gérard goes for 78-79% but tries to get as close to 80% as the flour will allow) combined with a good quality levain helps produce the airy crumb which characterizes a country bread.

A good levain has a delicate and complex flavor, it must taste like a ripe pear or peach. The only way for the baker to get these aromas is to control the production of acids. Gérard feeds his levain every five hours, which means that he never sleeps more than five hours at a stretch or leaves the bakery for longer than that. When he needs to go away for a few days, he dries it up. Exceptionally he may put it in the fridge for 12 hours at a time (but then he makes sure the temperature never goes below 46 degrees F/8 Celsius) to avoid losing some tasty acids.
Gérard says jokingly that he is a slave to his levain but almost in the same breath, he says that what he loves about his job is that it is constraint-free. I suspect he doesn’t see what he does as a job. It is his life, his “raison-d’être”. He shares his days and nights with Jojo and Bibi, his two black labs who seem to love bread with the same passion. They never come close either to the dough or to the loaves (they even act as though they didn’t exist) but the minute they hear the crunch of the bread knife in the kitchen, they rush in, sit and wait, tongue lolling, eyes shining. They always get a slice. Clever puppies!

Interestingly Gérard renews his levain regularly (every 4 to 5 weeks, sometimes 6 in the summer and every three months in the winter) as he finds it impossible to control the acids otherwise. He never uses high-protein flour (which, he says, is useful to make car tires, not bread) and he is a firm believer in the nutritional properties of wild yeasts as opposed to commercial yeast.
Today he is living his dream, which is to make it possible for people to eat real bread at an affordable price (his breads – which are sold for 24 oz – weigh closer to 26 and they are sold for less than 5 dollars) and to coax out of his levain the complex and heart-warming flavors he remembers from his childhood.
Considering the tastiness of his bread and the enthusiasm with which it is received, I’d say: “Once a champion always a champion! The former topnotch skier and racing coach extraordinaire is today a world class baker”. I would even go as far as to say that he is in a league of his own…

Levain

Since I often get asked about levain, I thought I would post this brief recap. If you have other questions, don’t hesitate to let me know and I’ll research the answer to the best of my abilities.

Stained-glass window(13th century) in the Chartres Cathedral

Levain, a.k.a as wild yeast starter, natural leaven or sourdough, is a culture of flour and water used to leaven bread dough. Unlike baker’s yeast which is industrially processed, wild yeasts occur naturally in the kernel of wheat, rye, or spelt or other cereal. Dormant until activated by water and kept reasonably warm, when awakened “they feed on the sugars converted from flour carbohydrate by the action of the enzymes (also naturally occurring)” (Whitley, Bread Matters), producing gas (which raises the bread) and alcohol (which gives it flavor).
Levain has been around for centuries: everybody has heard or read the story of the Egyptian baker who forgot a batch of dough somewhere warm and came back to see it considerably inflated. Being of the waste-not/want-not persuasion, he baked it anyway and found out that it had a delicious taste and great shelf-life.
This may well be a legend but the Roman writer, Pliny the Elder (who lived in the first century) does mention in one of his books (Book XVIII) that the Gauls – ancestors to the modern French – maintained their levain by feeding it brewer’s yeast and that their bread was consequently much lighter than the bread made by other nations (I love that story as it seems to imply that the French are genetically predisposed to making good bread. I wish!).
Being a mixture of flour and water, the levain is basically a dough. However, thanks to successive feedings (with various proportions of flour and water), it develops an active microbial flora from the micro-organisms present in the flour. Bacteria – which are also present – are kept in check by the production of lactic and acetic acids. It is when microbial activity is at its most intense and becomes stabilized that this “dough” is used to leaven other dough.
Levains can be firm (50% hydration) or liquid, sometimes very liquid (up to 200% hydration). The lower the hydration rate, the slower the fermentation and the more leeway and control the baker has. In the old days, levains were mostly firm.
Ruth Allman remembers in her endearing book, Alaska Sourdough, that “while mushing on the trail with the temperature flirting below zero, [her husband] Jack would put some sourdough in an old Prince Albert tobacco can. This he tucked inside the pocket of his woolshirt to make certain it would not freeze”.
She also remembers the old prospector who “buried his sourdough in the top of his sack of flour – warm and safe. When he arrived at camp, many times he only added flour and water to make the right quantity and consistency, without taking the sourdough from the flour sack. Saved a dish when no dish was available”.
Ruth Allman goes on to say that when the first attempt was made to climb Mt Mc Kinley, the expedition carried the starter on top of the flour too. “To make sourdoughs (sic), they poured the glacial water – heavy with silt – and made the dough right in the flour sack. Then rolled the sourdough on the end of a stick and baked in front of an open fire”.
I love all these stories but nowadays levains live a more sedate life. They usually ferment peacefully in the corner of a bakery or kitchen until called to action.
There has been a lot of brouhaha around levain in the past few years, so much so that some home bakers are weary of trying their hand at it. In my experience (and heaven knows that I was a complete greenfoot, levain-wise, when I started my first one in the mid-90’s ), it is fairly easy (not to mention exciting) to start and keep your own levain.
How-to’s abound both in books and on the Internet, so I am not going to add my grain of salt, as we say in French. I just want to say that you don’t need anything but flour and water. I never used grapes, apples, pineapple juice, milk or yogurt to start a culture although some home bakers have to good results (the idea being that the wild yeasts will feed on the sugar present in these ingredients and so be helped along).
I used the Nancy Silverton method (described in her book Breads from La Brea Bakery) but I skipped the grapes and it worked just fine. Go for it!

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