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!
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.