Page 14 - Ken Forkish News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

You've noticed the very normal life cycle of a starter  (or levain using Forkish's preferred terminology). An initial burst of activity and after day 4 a quieter period. Some even 'go to sleep' but it seems yours didn't quite go that far and just quietened down. Yours seems healthy and is on the right track. Recipes for creating starters rarely describe this and just assume it'll go from strength to strength but as living things they rarely follow recipes exactly. If I were you I'd carry on but use a smaller jar/tub and a 1/4 of the amounts he recommends. No need to waste huge amounts of flo...

I just made my second attempt at "Harvest Bread with Poolish" from Ken Forkish's Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast and I'm curious about his instructions for the poolish.The poolish ingredients are:flour (white): 500 gwater (80°F): 500 gyeast: 0.4 gGiven an overnight temperature between 65°F and 70°F, he says,When fully mature, 12 to 14 hours later, the poolish should be bubbly and

I've been baking two loaves at a time, one in a cast-iron Dutch oven (4 quarts, deep bottom), the other in a cast-iron combo-cooker (3.2 quarts, shallow bottom), and the loaf in the combo-cooker seems to cook faster and darker.I preheat the oven at 475°F for about 50 minutes, bake covered 30 minutes, finish uncovered 20 minutes.

June 5, 2021 - 10:53am roboboticus In Ken Forkish's Flour Water Salt Yeast, the quantities for starting and maintaining a levain seem excessive for a home baker, and I've seen several discussions of scaling them down when  maintaining the levain, but no explicit mention of scaling them down when  starting it. Is it ok to do so? I have no previous experience starting, maintaining, or even using a levain/starter, so it's all new to me. I read about people maintaining very small quantities, but it also sounds like there may be benefits to feeding larger quantities occasionally to strengthen t...

HermSenior Help with a starter Greetings. I have a question on some starter I recently made. But first off, I’ve been baking sour dough bread for about three quarters of a year (and probably 140 loaves or so) using Ken Forkish’s book as a starting point. The bread is great. I always bake two and give one away. About three weeks back I decided to make a second starter –and as far as I can recollect, I made it the same way I made my original batch. This one though took a little longer to get going and was nearly two weeks before I had a vigorous looking starter. The problem is that it sme...