The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book_ A Guide to Whole-Grain Breadmaking - Laurel Robertson [42]
Wherever we call for flour, of course, we mean whole wheat bread flour, preferably coarsely ground and fresh.
Water means unchlorinated or dechlorinated pure water, not too hard or soft.
Keep the desem very pure; avoid contaminating it with any extraneous stuff, particularly salt, that would damage its leavening power.
If you have to miss a baking, go ahead and feed the desem as if you were going to bake; either discard the portion of desem you would otherwise use for baking, or use it in one of the recipes at the end of this section.
CALCULATIONS & MEASUREMENTS
If you want control of the quality of your bread, we really do encourage you to keep track of the amount of flour that is in the desem. If you know that, you can calculate the total quantity of flour in the bread you make, which means you can keep the salt and the starter in proportion. Here is a rough estimate of weights and measures:
DESEM MEASURING EQUIVALENTS (APPROXIMATE)
Amount of flour Measure Weight
½ cup ⅓ cup ¼ lb
1 cup ¾ cup ½ lb
2 cups 1 ½ cups 1 lb
3 cups 2 ½ cups 1 ½ lb
4 cups 3 cups 2 lb
Desem Bread Recipe
4 cups flour (600 g)
2 ½ teaspoons salt (14 g)
1 ½ cups desem
1 ⅓ to 2 cups cool water (315 to 475 ml)
With a vigorous desem, ripened for 12 to 14 hours after feeding, this recipe takes about seven hours from beginning to end. It differs from the recipe for making bread with a week-old desem in the timing and also in the proportion of desem used in the dough: once the starter attains its full vigor, the desem makes up only one-third of the dough.
MIXING THE DOUGH
Mix the flour and the salt. Soften the desem in the smaller amount of water, then mix in the flour, adding additional water or flour as necessary to make dough. Wait a few minutes before you adjust the consistency. The dough should be softer than the desem itself but slightly stiffer than ordinary pan dough, so that when you squeeze it you don’t have to strain but you do feel the muscles in your fingers working.
Knead the dough well, about 20 minutes or 600 strokes by hand, about 12 minutes with a dough hook on slow speed, until the dough becomes stretchy and strong. We find that desem dough is easy to underknead by hand, easy to overknead with the dough hook; overkneaded loaves tend to rip toward the end of their final rise.
As we have mentioned before, you will notice that desem dough made with coarse flour feels dry to the touch when you first mix it up, but as kneading progresses, it begins to feel sticky—somewhat the opposite of what happens with ordinary doughs. When you finish kneading the dough, the surface should be smooth, shiny, and sticky under your palm.
Set the dough in a bowl large enough to allow it to grow, about a four-quart capacity for this amount of dough. Cover the top of the bowl with a damp cloth or plate and set aside in a draft-free place to rise at room temperature, about 65° to 70°F.
The dough usually takes about four hours to ripen. Deflate it at about the three-hour mark. It will not rise up high like ordinary dough during this time, but if its surface loses its shine and feels unsticky to the touch, then the dough is ripe and ready to shape.
SHAPING
Turn the dough out onto the kneading surface top down, and gently press it to deflate it. The dough is usually not sticky, so additional flour is not needed, but if your dough seems too soft, flour the board lightly before turning the dough onto it. Throughout this part of the process, try to preserve intact the smooth surface that developed on top of the rising dough. This gluten film will make the best top crust for your hearth loaves.
Flatten the dough and divide it in half. With the gluten film downwards, press the dough into flat circles about an inch thick. Fold the edges as shown, pressing with the heel of your hand to seal the “petals” of the flower down, four or more times until a springy ball is formed.
Turn the dough ball over on its side, and rotate it while pressing on the