The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book_ A Guide to Whole-Grain Breadmaking - Laurel Robertson [40]
The Second Week
At this stage, your desem is a teenager, so to say. It is developing rapidly—young and strong, but not quite what it will become. You can help it to its full potential by giving it new food every day and keeping it at a steady cool temperature: the leavening organisms will multiply and predominate more and more. Daily feeding and kneading also prevent the maturing starter dough from becoming alcoholic, which would reduce its leavening power.
Assuming that you will want to use your desem to make bread again at the end of the week, how much flour and water should you add each day? The desem you’re starting out with contains one cup of flour, and you’ll always want to keep that much desem in the storage place. You need a desem containing 3 cups of flour for one (two-loaf) baking, so measure 3 cups of flour and put it near your desem. Use ⅓ cup of that flour for each day’s feeding until the last day, when you can use the remaining cup or so.
Each time you feed it, soften the desem in water measuring somewhat less than half the amount of flour you’ll add, then adjust the dough’s consistency by adding a little more flour or water. Knead the whole newly fed desem about 10 minutes, until it begins to be sticky. Set it in its storage container and keep it in its cool place. On the last day, the day before you will bake again, divide the desem. Three-fourths will be the starter for the next day’s bread (it will have 3 cups of flour in it); one-fourth of it (with 1 cup of flour), set aside as your “mother starter” for future bakings. Store both of them at about 65°F overnight.
It is really interesting to bake with your desem every day this week so that you can watch how its leavening power develops, and taste the subtle changes in the flavor of the bread it produces. For instructions, see bottom of next page.
To make the bread, follow the recipe.
Now, about the desem itself: if your starter is making bread that is as light and fresh-tasting as you want, start storing it according to the instructions given in Care of the Mature Desem. If you want it to develop more leavening power than it has right now, give it another week on the same schedule as the one you have just completed. If you aren’t sure whether your two-week-old desem is what it should be, here are a few things to look for.
MARKS OF A MATURE DESEM
If your desem has been nurtured under the best conditions, it will probably be able to ripen its dough in 4 hours the first time you change to the regular desem bread recipe.
Watch the condition of the desem itself. When you open its container on baking day, the first whiff may be alcoholic but that evaporates quickly. The fragrance is not sour but wonderful—pleasantly cidery. Ripe desem looks a little like beige cottage cheese inside. Just as dough ripens, desem too ripens, in its own way. In a ripe desem the gluten is completely digested by microorganisms, so when you soften it in water, it disintegrates completely. You can see this when you mix up the bread dough. If you try the same thing with an ordinary dough, or with unripe desem, white starch will wash into the water, leaving a rubbery, insoluble gluten in your hand.
As the desem gains in power, it will ripen more quickly, gradually coming to the stage where it is at its best about 12 to 14 hours after it has been fed; this seems to be the tempo that gives it its greatest leavening power as well as its best flavor. It may take a few bakings, though, before its forces come into balance.
IF YOU WANT TO BAKE EVERY DAY DURING THE SECOND WEEK
If you would like to watch your desem grow by baking a loaf every day while it comes to its own, simply double your starter with half a cup of flour each evening. (When the desem is so young, you don’t want to increase it by more than double at one time.) Knead well, divide in two; use one of the pieces as your starter the next day. Mix with half a cup of water, one cup of flour, and a scant teaspoon of salt. Proceed as in