Hamelman’s Duram Bread uses a duram flour biga, a white flour levain and 90% duram flour, which is one of my favorite recipes which I bake every few weeks. I decided to experiment replacing 125g of water with RYW in the levain and 450g RYW in the final dough, which decreased bulk from an estimated 2 hours to 1 hour and final proof from 1 hr to 35". I was surprised to get an ear useing 90% Rimacinata, and the crumb wasn’t as tight as when using only the biga and sourdough levain. I didn’t notice a difference in the flavor of this delicious bread. I’m going to continue experimenting using yeast water in other recipes.
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Very nice indeed, Richard. Wow! that’s a lot of yeast water. No wonder the ferment was so quick. Great oven spring and a lovely crumb. Looks delicious. I would think with such a high percentage the YW itself would lend lots of flavour.
Beautiful baking Richard. You are doing so much with your yeast water it is inspiring. Today must be semolina day on Breadtopia with your bake and Abe’s.
Thanks, Abe. Surprisingly, the taste was the same, although the yeast water iteself had a pungent aroma. I’ll probably try using less yeast water for my next bake. Caroline seems to be all over the place in her use of YW, and it seems that almost any combination works for her.
Richard
Thanks, Benny.
Hi Richard. I recently popped a couple of seriuosly overripe plums into a 350ml bottle of spring water to make PYW. It was such a great success in building levains for a variety of loaves that it has displaced my version of NMNF seed into second place. Some time back I used apple YW that was equally good, so I am tilting toward YW as my primary method of inoculation. I shall therefore follow your experiments with interest. Joe