As a follow up experiment to my last no knead sourdough of last week, this week I went from 70% milled whole wheat to 100%. I also swapped to a white winter wheat instead of the red wheat I used last time.
About 3/4 cup of wheat germ and bran I had sifted out were allowed to soften for 24 hours in a mash before mixing into the dough.
With a 38 hour cold fermentation time, the dough rose well but more slowly than before and didn’t have the same strength as before. It had reasonable oven spring when I baked it in the batard clay baker.
Crumb is decent, but being 100% whole wheat a bit smaller composition than the 70% version from last week (the white wheat may have had some impact as well). Flavor is outstanding wheat and moderate sourdough.
I’ve been playing around with a formula of Yohan Ferrant that uses only 1% sourdough starter and all fresh milled whole grain wheat.
The idea is to let it bulk ferment at room temperature for 24 hours. In this case, I woke up at the 20-hour mark and it was definitely ready to go. Then you barely shape it and proof it seam side down, bake it seam side up. A loaf pan would have worked well too
Melissa, your innocent reference to Yohan Ferrant just sent me off on an unexpected, lengthy tangent to find out who he is and what he does. Fascinating theory at a quick read. I’ve watched several Youtube videos and read some second-hand stuff but haven’t come across any first-hand specific information about his actual process. Do you have any links that you’d be willing to share? I’d also love to follow your experiments with more of your usual excellent detail. Might be worth a separate post? Thanks!
p.s. Sorry for hijacking your post, James, your bread looks wonderful!
I have a feeling that you know much more about Ferrant’s technique than I do!
I had seen the Mockmill company on Instagram repost the bread of @ceorbread (a baker in LA) in which he described learning this formula from Ferrant at a visit to the Sourdough Library in Belgium - add this to my visit someday list
After asking some questions, I had this to go on:
1% starter
Hydration up to you (I did one at 95 and one at 90) [edited: looking at my notes, both were 95% water]
Whole meal fresh milled flour
Approx 24 hrs fermentation
Minimal shaping & bake seam side up
My 95% h2o was also 30% rye and thus a soup that I proofed in plastic wrap. Came out well actually, minus the wet bottom. That one was my first and I’d had little faith, so doubled the starter to 2%. The bulk ferment was 17 hrs and possibly too long at that.
Thanks for the speedy reply. Did you notice any difference in flavor? With such a long bulk fermentation I was wondering if it were very sour? At what room temperature were you fermenting these to 2 breads? Here’s a link to the first of his 2 videos on Youtube, the second video should follow it immediately https://youtu.be/Fszb0GiyA1k He has a heavy French accent and is a little hard to understand.
I’ll give this a try for my next bake. The 24 hour bulk fermentation would actually make it easier to time when a loaf is ready. My current method makes it impossible to have a fresh loaf around lunchtime without refrigeration which I prefer not to do because I don’t like sour.
I watched the videos - so neat, and yes, a little hard to grasp when he gets into the science and switches to French terminology, or people talk over him.
I’d love to read scientific studies behind the claims about low inoculation and not kneading improving the leptins/phytic acid, starch breakdown, glycemic index. I don’t know if these are theories with scientific testing behind them. The technique is interesting to play with regardless.
I was thinking about your sour preference. Of course, sour perception is particular to the person, but my perception and others I give my bread to is that my bread is not very sour. But I do long fermentations most of the time, with often 12-24 hours of refrigeration. There are so many variables that impact flavor, but I thought that hotter ferments were more sour…in general. I guess longer is too…so there is a sweet spot? Literally
I also wonder if the way I keep and feed my starter is the reason for my relatively low sourness. I mention this because it’s not the “normal” way, and maybe you want to try it?
I pull the entire jar out, feed it, and use ~80% of it. Then re-feed and refrigerate. When I want to bake, I again pull out the entire jar and bring it up to high activity. (Sometimes I don’t need a feeding to get it to double/triple.) So, the starter that I use to build a leaven for a recipe is almost always in a building stage (in fridge or on counter). It spends very little time warm and shrinking, or cold and shrunken. Just a thought…
Thanks so much for explaining your starter feeding regimen. I usually bake only every 7-10 days, so my starter sits in the fridge until the day before I bake when I feed it 1 or 2 times during the day and then mix up a levain which rises overnight. My past practice has been to use 10g of starter in the levain, so I don’t maintain very much starter at all, maybe 1/4 cup. I hate wasting it, so I try to use up the extra in pancakes during the week. I think it was in one of your posts that mentioned using a levain that was just floating rather than fully mature to reduce sourness, so I’ve been doing that. I’d also read that cold retarding and slow, long fermentation contributes to sourness, so I try not to refrigerate the dough at any stage. There’s so much information out there and a lot of it seems almost contradictory! I don’t know if your feeding method would work with my infrequent baking schedule unfortunately. Maybe I need to maintain an even smaller amount of starter?
I agree with you about the health claims made for various baking styles. It all sounds good, but I’d really like to see some rigorous scientific examination of the claims to see what if any of it is true.
I thought I’d put this on another post. Melissa, I couldn’t resist trying the Ferrant method. It was the easiest loaf of bread I’ve ever made. It literally took about 5 minutes to mill the turkey red, measure the salt, water, and starter, and give it a quick mix just until incorporated. It was 100% whole grain at 90% hydration. I usually sift and remill the bran, but didn’t bother this time. I put it in my microwave with the door open and light on which gets to about 70 degrees. It was almost doubled in just 20 hours. I’ve found in other methods that my whole grain breads do better if I form them before they are doubled in the bulk fermentation, so that’s what I did this time. This was a very, very wet dough, more like batter. I didn’t so much form it as flop all 4 sides inward and then scoop it into a heavily rice floured lined banneton. It rose while I preheated the oven to 460. Then I flipped it (really poured it) into a small square casserole dish and into the oven. I think that it would have been very flat if I hadn’t contained it, but the casserole produced some respectable oven spring. The taste was very good, not bitter, some sourness but not overwhelming and super moist. A couple friends came over for an unexpected impromptu lunch so we ate most of it before I could get photos. I will definitely be trying this again for it’s ease and benefits of timing. Thanks so much for mentioning it.
It sounds like your starter maintenance routine is well suited to your baking schedule. All other factors being equal, I believe that milling and using the flour right away makes for a sweeter sourdough too so that probably helps. But yeah, there is a lot of info out there about sourness and temp and wheat type and starter build…
I’m glad you had a good experience with the microlevain bread you made. I hear you on the flopping batter. The high hydration is challenging. Recently I’ve been using Breadtopia’s whole grain bread flour, and the extra protein makes for a more elastic dough at 95-100% h2o. I’m working on a write up of my many whole grain tests of the past few months…
I try to use locally grown grain as much as possible which presents it’s own challenges and probably made for an extra soupy dough, but that’s all part of the fun. Next time I may back off the hydration by 5% or so and see what happens. I really look forward to reading your article.
Thanks, jyn510, I will check it out. I’ve made the Ferrant-style low innoculation breads several times now and find that I get a better result with lower hydration, around 75% seems optimal for me.
