The way the word “levain” is generally used was at first very confusing to me. Was my starter a levain? What’s the difference between my starter and why am I calling it something different? What makes the most sense to me is that my starter culture is what I maintain week to week with regular feedings to eventually use in baking and a levain was a mixture made from my original culture for the express purpose of baking a recipe. Depending on what I’m baking I’ll use different ratios and timings for my levain. My pizza levain gets a 1:1:1 ratio and only needs 3-5 hours to mature as I don’t want too much sour flavor competing with the toppings’ flavors. For bread, on the other hand, I use a 1:2:2 ratio and let it rise overnight to develop more sourness in the loaves.

Understanding when your levain has matured enough to bake will come with experience but generally, you want to see it at least double, if not triple, in volume before use. Put a rubber band around your container marking the level where your freshly mixed levain sits and use that as an indicator of where it started. Many recipes will simply list “mature levain” as an ingredient so you’ll need to know the signs when your levain has peaked. The top of the levain will be very bubbly, smell very fragrant and it may have even started to slide back down to the jar indicating that there is enough gas trapped in the gluten structure of the mixture that it can’t continue to grow upwards.

Your starter culture is a symbiotic mixture of yeast and bacteria that live and thrive from the flour and water that you feed it. What happens if you forget to feed your starter for a few weeks? Is it dead? Do you need to start from scratch? You’d be surprised how resilient a starter culture can be. However long it sat on your counter or in your refrigerator simply give it a good mix and feed it how your normally would. It should bounce right back.

To keep your starter healthy, you’ll need to feed it regularly. Feeding your starter revolves around using different ratios of starter, water, and flour. I normally keep 210g of starter on hand and feed it once a week when I’m not using it for pizza or bread. I use a 1:10:10 method, which is 1-part old starter, 10 parts water, and 10 parts flour. My normal feedings consist of 10g old starter, 100g water, and 100g flour. I’ll mix all the parts in the morning, and let it rise for at least 12 hours, so it’s grown and peaked before feeding it again, or storing it in the refrigerator until needed.