Three Weeks in the Fridge: Why the 1:10:10 Starter Outlasted the Others

The Detmold method is a German system for building rye bread around a long, cool sour rather than around yeast. This is the simplified home version: 40% rye, a cold sour sponge built the night before at 20 °C for fourteen hours (per Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations), and dimpling instead of scoring. The result is a moist, deeply sour loaf with the irregular pocketed surface that German bakers call "porung".

Shokupan is a milk bread so soft it tears into ribbons, and the hard part in a sourdough version is keeping the acidity from shouting over the milk. The fix has two parts: a yudane made from 40% of the flour weight scalded with boiling milk, and a starter used young, at hour six, when it is sweet rather than sour.

One hundred percent whole wheat, no white flour anywhere, 92% hydration, and no raw bran taste. The mechanism is a scald: 20% of the whole wheat flour is mixed with boiling water and left to cool, which gelatinises its starch and softens its bran so completely that the finished loaf tastes like a mild brown bread rather than like health food.