If you keep it in the fridge then, ideally, you should refresh it every so often, e.g. every 7 days or so. However, you can neglect it for longer: just take off any yukky looking skin which may have formed, and spoon out a bit from underneath.

To refresh: stir it and add around 2-3 times flour and the same weight of water to have a 100% hydrated leaven.

So, if you have 50g starter, then add 100g of flour and 100g of water and stir. Wait around 12 hours at room temperature before using in a recipe. If it’s looking a bit stale, then repeat, with 50g of the refreshed starter, more flour+water. etc.

That’s it.

It’s very forgiving in terms of the times for proving and resting. I’ve not had a bad batch yet with it.

800g leaven (100% hydration)

350g water

1100g strong white flour

30g sugar

30g salt

The leaven should have been refreshed within the last 36 hours or so. I haven’t tried it longer.

Mix the lot together then knead for around 5 minutes. It’s a very stiff dough, but should be smooth when finished.

Rest at room temperature for 2-4 hours.

Divide into around 23 100g balls and then shape into bagels.

(There is a youtube video here which is similar to the way I do it. My dough is stiffer than his, so mine look more like the first one he does, or more like the pics on the Wild Yeast Blog. I would second the tip for spraying the ends to make them stick together better, if the dough is very stiff.)

Cover with baking paper and plastic/cling film and leave to prove at room temperature for 1-2 hours, then put in the refrigerator until needed (at least 2-4 hours, or overnight, if required).

Poach in simmering water with 1tsp bicarbonate of soda for 30 secs each side. Drain then add topping if required. I like seeds (sesame, millet, poppy), but the children like them plain.

Bake at 200C for 20 mins.

The dough itself was wetter than I’m used to in my normal method. Also, it was proved at room temperature for an hour or so, then should have been retarded in the fridge overnight. Mine was looking so puffed up that I retrieved it earlier as I feared it would over-prove. It was so floppy, it was almost impossible to move from the baking sheets to the poaching water, so, in desperation, I stuck it in the freezer for around 20 minutes, which helped with the moving.

I will double check the hydration, but can’t quite understand why you’d prove it for so much longer, at similar temperatures, than the wild yeast variant? Maybe it’s meant to be more aerated? I don’t know. Whatever, I’ll stick to the wild yeast recipe in future as it’s pretty much bomb proof, and I prefer the end results.

The guidelines I work with are that a wheat leaven will need refrigeration if you aren’t planning on feeding/refreshing it with new flour/water for more than a few days. I’ve gone four or five without refrigeration, over winter: I’d guess if the weather was warmer then it would deteriorate more rapidly.

Mine is kept in a tupperware with a lid, and before baking is refreshed with a ratio of 1:2:2 starter:flour:water, so 50g starter would be mixed with 100g flour and 100g water (at room temperature). It is bubbling away nicely several hours later, or earlier if it’s warmer. This is called 100% hydration, i.e. the ratio of water to flour is 1:1. You sometimes see recipes which call for lower hydration, e.g. 70%, which would be a thicker mix as 100g flour would only be mixed with 70g water. Some suggest that a lower hydration keeps for longer. I keep mine hydrated to 100%, becaue it’s easier to work out, and have been successful with a nicely active leaven.

So, as a rule of thumb, to maintain an unrefrigerated active leaven, feed it at least every 3-4 days with twice as much flour and twice as much water as the bit you are refreshing. This can be upped to 1:3:3 and produce good results. Some people feed a leaven twice a day: morning and night, but mine is rarely refreshed more than once a day.

If you aren’t baking so frequently, then the wheat leaven can survive for a fair while, if it’s refrigerated. However, it may need an intermediate refreshment before use to perk it up. So if you started with 50g from the fridge, add 100g flour + 100g water (250g). If you left this for several hours it should be bubbling, and you could then take 100g from this and add 200g flour + 200g water to end up with 500g active starter.I have read that if you plan on keeping it for much longer then it can be frozen. I do have some in my freezer as an emergency backup, but haven’t so far gone that long without refreshing/baking to actually need it.

Uses for discarded/leftover leaven. I make bagels + sourdough muffins with mine, regularly, so rarely throw it away.

I keep two leavens, both wheat and rye. The rye one is more forgiving, and needs less frequent refreshes, which suits me as I tend to use less of it. You can mix and match leavens and flour in recipes: in my experience they are hardier than some would have us believe.

I pretty much followed the recipe as-is, apart from no milk powder (I used a bit of milk instead for the water). Also I used oil on the crosses instead of butter (pure laziness, on my part!), and no honey in the glaze. My dough was retarded in the fridge after shaping, so they could be piped and baked first thing this morning. The piping was done by Emma.

I’d not worked with dough this sweet before, so wondered why the sugar was added in bits after the kneading, but it gets so sticky you’d not want to work it for long with all the sugar in!

Total, and wickedly delicious.

Hot Cross Buns

It is totally and utterly delicious and very more-ish: quite the nicest seeded bread I’ve ever made or tasted, so it’s being posted to the Wild Yeast YeastSpotting archive.

I followed Zeb’s recipe, but changed it to suit a tiny bit (different grains, no commercial yeast, more water):

Soaker:

50g Old sourdough bread (very dry!)
25 g linseed (ground coarsely in a coffee mill)
25g millet
20 g chopped rye grains (the Shipton Mill pumpernickel, ready chopped)
200g water (I used more than the recipe called for as my stale bread was very, very dry)

Starter
30g mature rye leaven
200g water
225 g dark rye flour

I started the soaker earlier on in the day than the starter, which was mixed and left overnight.

Mix the starter + soaker with the following:

370 g strong white flour
155 g water 15 g salt

150g toasted seeds (I used a mix of pumpkin, sunflower + sesame and toasted at 180C for around 10 mins)

I mixed by hand as my old bread was well and truly mushed up by now. This sticky dough was stretched and folded for around 10 mins then the toasted seeds added. I added these later as I didn’t fancy kneading it with lumpy bits in.

Cover and leave for around 3 hours.

Then divide into two loaves, shape into a batard and leave to proof on floured couches (about another 3 hours, in my kitchen). Edit: I forgot to say that I sprinkled some untoasted seeds inside my couche as they were proved top down.

Preheat oven to 230C, bake for 10 mins then turn down to 210 and bake for a further 30 mins. Mine were baked directly on a granite stone.

Zeb suggests leaving until the next day to start eating, but mine didn’t last that long, in fact all that’s left as I type are those three small slices, just asking to be eaten. (I did  freeze one loaf, to avoid temptation.)

seeded bread

I hand mixed it, but the biga was so dry that it didn’t mix very easily with the rest of the ingredients. I tried to get rid of the lumps but it wasn’t easy, so will maybe try a poolish starter next time, or perhaps a sourdough approach.

The instructions on shaping in the book weren’t entirely clear to me, so I had a quick google. There were so many different ways of shaping these on the net, these were some of my favourites:

 Vincent Shaping Ciabatta.  Professional baker who makes it look effortless. Lovely Jubbly, innit?

Wild Yeast Shaping Ciabatta. Looks like these might be square? I couldn’t quite figure that out.

Fornobravo . This one squishes it down just before it goes in the oven.

Update: Two of the loaves have been munched by now, and no rubbery dough bits were noticed at all. Phew!

I ended up trying a mix of methods: some squished before putting in the oven, and others handled like a baby. I can’t tell the difference between them at all, externally, but haven’t seen the difference in crumb yet as I’ve only cut one, which I did purely to get a photo, and then had to eat it, with some tapenade. The trials and tribulations I go through writing this blog…

800g of flour makes 5 good sized ciabatta loaves.

ciabatta loaves