The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book_ A Guide to Whole-Grain Breadmaking - Laurel Robertson [41]
Please refer to the feeding schedules on the next pages.
STORING THE DESEM
If you have a dependably cool place, and will be very regular in your care, the desem will thrive kept unrefrigerated. The temperature should be steady at between 50° and 55°F. If you are going to be baking every day, this would be the ideal arrangement. There is something wonderfully romantic, not to mention delicious, about keeping your starter dough in a crock in the cellar and bringing it out to bake fresh bread daily. That is essentially the tradition the village baker followed—his desem was never idle. Maybe some small community bakeries will be able to revive this tradition. What a great thing that would be!
But for most people it is a lot more convenient to store the desem in the refrigerator. In its first few days in the cold the desem does lose some of its strength and the dough for the next baking may require a little extra rising time to ripen. But the desem adapts quickly to refrigerated storage and needs only the usual 4-hour fermentation from then on.
NURSING A NEGLECTED DESEM
Ordinarily there is a bit of alcohol on the surface when you unwrap a desem that has been stored, but it quickly evaporates, and the inside is fresh and sweet. If you let a desem get too warm, though, or don’t feed it on schedule, it can get so alcoholic that it loses its leavening strength and smells unpleasantly sour. Bread baked with it is heavy and sour, and most often the crust rips open during the final rise.
Never fear, all is not lost. There is an old saying, “If you give it a chance, the desem always wins out in the end.” Help the desem recover by feeding it daily and giving it at least an 8-hour stretch at its favorite temperature each time you feed it. Make the desem fairly stiff and knead it well before you put it away. Keep it tightly wrapped in the cloth. Sour desem, if it is not too awful, can work well in the recipes.
Two Suggested Schedules
IF YOU BAKE TWICE A WEEK OR OFTENER
START with your mature desem:
It measures about ¾ cup,
contains 1 cup flour,
and weighs ½ pound.
FEEDING About 12 hours before you mix the dough feed your desem:
⅔ to 1 cup water
2 cups flour
THE DESEM Set aside one-third (about ¾ cup) for future bakings.
THE BREAD STARTER Round the remaining two-thirds to ripen
as starter for your bread dough.
It contains 2 cups flour.
IF YOU BAKE ONCE A WEEK
START with ⅓ cup of your mature desem:
It contains ½ cup flour,
and weighs ¼ pound.
FIRST FEEDING Midweek feed your desem:
3 to 4 tablespoons water
½ cup flour
SECOND FEEDING About 12 hours before you mix the dough feed your desem:
⅔ to ¾ cup water
1 ½ cups flour
THE DESEM Set aside one-fifth (about ⅓ cup) for future bakings.
THE BREAD STARTER Round the rest to ripen as starter for your bread dough.
It contains about 2 cups flour.
Feeding Your Mature Desem
From now on, feed the desem about 12 hours before you plan to mix up the dough for baking. The desem does have to be fed twice a week, minimum, to keep its leavening power, whether or not you bake bread with it. We give two plans for feeding, one if you will be baking once a week, and the other if you will bake twice a week or oftener.
Whether you bake once a week or twice, the feeding method is the same—except that you will not take out a part if you are not going to bake.
Dissolve the desem in the water. Add the flour and more water or flour as necessary to make a fairly stiff dough. Knead 10 minutes. If you will be baking next day, divide the lump. Round the part you will use to make bread the next day, and keep it in a covered container with a little room to expand; the smaller part is your desem. Round the desem and tie it up snugly in a clean (not bleachy) cloth, and again in a second cloth. Keep it in a tightly closed nonmetal container. Keep both of them at 60° to 70°F for 12 to 14 hours; after that, put the desem in its closed container in the refrigerator, and make bread with the other, larger lump.
If you will not