Levain, sourdough bread

A levain is started with a mere 1/4 cup water and flour combined. 

The microorganisms are found everywhere, the air, the flour, the container, our bodies. It is the organisms contained in the flour that are cultivated to concentration. This usually takes four days to see little bubbles or signs of active life. This levain had tiny bubbles at twelve hours. 

At twenty-four hours the water and flour partially separated and the mixture smelled very bad. Water was added to refreshen and flour was added to feed the mixture. 

That was the last of the unpleasant odor.

On the third feeding the mixture more than tripled in size and lifted the lid and poured over the side. 

The levain was depleted nearly entirely for the production of two loaves and refreshed with water and flour starting with nearly nothing but an inoculation of a remnant tablespoon or so of live concentrated sourdough culture that remained in the crock container.  

So the levain starter takes off again with a head start this time, and the larger portion is now separated and becomes the sponge that will age and be stiffened into dough that will ferment for days  then finally refreshed again and fed, proofed one last time as a loaf and then baked. 

Dough made from natural live organisms behaves differently than dough made from commercial yeast. With sourdough the baker basically has one good shot. There is no punching down and then re-proofing without a refreshment of new water and flour. The organisms consume the starches, there isn't enough fuel left when they've already spent the previous eight or twelve hours ingesting it. The organisms have not been selectively bred for their gassy property like  the cloned commercial yeast cells have been. So for sourdough bread, the fermented sponge that is built up in stages is refreshed one last time as minimally as possible so that the fermented portion is not overly diluted with the refreshed portion that has no  character and then formed into a loaf and left to proof its final increment. 

The levain was a straight shot too, none of this feeding and spilling out and feeding and spilling out, no, instead the levain was simply refreshed as minimally as possible until it outgrew its container. The size of the crock container for the levain determined when the loaves were started.

The first loaf was baked at 500℉ for 10 minutes then cut back to 350℉/175℃  for 20 minutes

The second loaf was baked at 500℉ for 20 minutes and was pulled because it darkened.