I was wondering, in step 4 you said the remaining levain becomes the new sourdough starter, so does that mean we should combine this with the original sourdough starter or do we now have two separate sourdough starters?

The loaves spread out and looked like Jabba the Hut 🙁 They were PBFs (partial bread failures) but they still tasted delicious. Timeline: I decided to mix the poolish later on Saturday night around 10:15pm and set it aside covered at room temperature. As I move away from straight dough bread this week I would say that the first bread I made – the Saturday white – had the best rise and crumb in many ways (lots of air pockets, high rise, glossy crumb and probably the best crust). When I try the only effect is that all of the bubbles breaks and the dough shrinks down to nearly starting size. Though it wasn’t as aromatic as last week’s harvest bread, it really was delicious and truly addictive.The basic recipe for the farmer’s bread comes out looking and tasting almost like sourdough bread and the smell of freshly baked bread that just came out of the oven is pretty amazing. Another reason I still make sourdough bread, and didn’t give up years ago, is that I read Andrew Whitley’s book ‘Do Sourdough; slow bread for busy lives’. In Ken’s book he talks about the biga imparting a “distinctive kind of earthiness to the flavour of the bread”. I almost always do a cold proof in the refrigerator and I’ll put the second loaf out only after I have baked the first.

When the time comes to soak the grains the night before, do you mix the water and flours thoroughly for this step or just throw them together and let the sit for the night? This will require a fair amount of effort with daily feedings, temperature control and lots of attention to detail. His baking cookbook My Bread has interesting recipes with many photo illustrations which are very helpful.

Clearly room (and dough) temperature during bulk fermentation is an important issue that’s been impacting all the loaves I’ve made from the book. Amazingly, when I scrape the mess up and put it in a bowl to proof and bake later on, it still tastes really good. Could I also ask if doing more than four turns or more frequent turns would speed up the fermentation process?