So, I want to play with making a levain, which I’ve never done before, and I’m drawn to this recipe: https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/pain-au-levain-recipe mostly because I have used other King Arthur recipes with a lot of success. The thing is, it calls for pumpernickel flour and my spouse isn’t a fan. So can I just replace it with the same amount of… Whole wheat flour? Or just white all purpose flour? Or does that not really work and I need to find a new recipe?
Thanks!
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As long as the total weight of flour is the same you’ll still get bread no matter how much you much you change the ratio of white/wheat/rye flours. It will taste different and have a different texture but it will still be bread.
This recipe in particular is something like 90/10 white to rye so it’s basically white bread with a little rye for a more complex flavor. 90/10 white to wheat is going to be pretty similar.
Thanks! That makes sense.
In my experience you can make your starter from any flour, it will work, but using other than white wheat flours will produce a tastier loaf. I generally use a mixture of wheat and rye. The recipe calls for pumpernickel or rye so just try rye. Besides, there is only 53g of it to 630g of wheat flour, your spouse won’t even notice.
I wish, but my spouse has a pretty sensitive palate. Sigh.
It’s 8.4%, they won’t notice. Why don’t you make 2 loaves, one with, one without. If your spouse isn’t allergic, maybe you’ll convince them.
Lol maybe I’ll do that. I‘ll see how it comes out with whole wheat and maybe a second round I’ll try rye or pumpernickel. We’re only two people so making two loaves at once is a little much for us to eat.
Scale the recipe down or do half and half. You can even let half of the dough do cold ferment and/or cold proofing in the fridge for extra tasty bread.
Good call. Maybe I’ll try that! I do like doing the cold ferment.
Rye flour in American recipes doesn’t do anything. Replace it with any wheat you have. 53g for a loaf won’t make any difference.
Why in American recipes specifically?
Because American recipes rarely have any rye in them. Rye bread in Europe usually has 80%+ rye content for comparison.
My starter was made with unbleached white, non organic flour and tap water, is maintained on the same, and works for all bread that has some amount of wheat flour, including the one that is 60% wholegrain rye.
Levain is simply big starter - I always make it with unbleached white flour no matter what the recipe says.
For the actual bread, I’d sub whole wheat flour but watch it, it will rise faster than rye.
I’ve got 2 different starters, one on wholewheat and the other on whole rye. Since both flours are wholegrain they grow just fine and are fairly similar! In terms of the final bread, I think it will be very similar if you just sub the rye with wholewheat. In fact I completely agree with all the others who’ve said exactly that. And, I must also agree that if it is less than 10% rye in the final bread, it is quite difficult to taste the rye.
