Hallo,

I used it about 20 years ago as I started breadbaking at home. At this time it was in Germany very popular if you've been interested in organic food. The whole grain baking book I bought at this time had some recipes with backferment and yeast, but none with sourdough. The breads I made were pretty good, but nowadays I prefer sourdough (rye and wheat). Why buy an expensive powder if you can make wonderful sourdough just with flour and water? I can't remember the taste of the backferment breads exactly, but I don't think they were better than my breads now.

Beate

Thank you for your comments, Beabarba!

I understand your point of view.

Here you are some of the reasons for my interest in the backferment:

1. The last year I have been living a kind of nomadic life across some places in europe. I tasted different organic breads. The one I enjoyed more was made with sekowa. I knew nothing about it at that time.

2. The inner activity of microorganisms is qualitatively different than that of a sourdough culture, so the starter "behaves" in a slightly different way, and allows you to make more things. ie: Once you have your starter, you needn´t to feed it regularly and you can make "wheatlike" loafs, but with "non breadable" cereals. That makes possible to get a 100% barley or maize loaf with an open crumb texture, instead the brick you would have normally... so I could make a very good gluten free loaf. This is something I would like.

3. Sekowa is only a trademark for a variety of a very ancient ferment. But they process the culture into powder for selling it.  The way to prepare the ferment is very similar to a current sourdough culture, and therefore you can make it at home (if you know how...) In that case, you would not have to pay for an expensive powder and order regular parcels from germany or wherever.

This is my aim. Finding the right recipe and know how to start the backferment from scratch at home.

Pablo

Dear Pablo,

I have posted a detailed description of how to use the Sekowa Backferment on my blog and am right now beginning a dedicated blog with a friend of mine. Unfortunately the old post  is in Italian. Let me know if you can understand it, otherwise I'll send an English translation to you via e-mail, if you want.

100% barley bread with an open crumb? Can you explain how that ferment works and how it permits to obtain such wonders? I've been leavening a lot of funny stuff with rye in the last couple of years, including rice and corn, but rarely with an open crumb.
Thanks. (p.s. Bologna)

Dear Nico,

with the Sekowa Spezial-Backferment you can bake breads, cakes etc. using 100% of any cereal flour.I've done 100% spelt, 100%kamut, chick pea/wheat/millet etc.

Of course you can do 100% whole meal as well.

The Sekowa Spezial-Backferment makes any bread soft and it doesn't break when you cut it.

I rarely use oil, sugar or other ingredients except flour/meal.

As Syl wrote, we're setting up a blog about the Sekowa Spezial-Backferment, so if you're interested, we'll post the link ASAP.

P.S. Are you from Bologna? If so, I or Silvia can bring you some Sekowa to try it out.

@ Pablo:

The Backferment is not that expensive. You can buy it on Amazon.de for less than 7€ and it will last for approx. 6 months, unless you are a professional baker or make a lot of bread! :o)

We're experimenting right now the process of recreating the Backferment at home, anyway. So maybe that will be of some interest to you.

I(t) can stay in the fridge... :o)))

Hello to all of you:-)

And specially thanks to Sturmele and Syl!

Thank you for answer this post and sharing your experiences. You are so kind. My smile is now bigger than my face, haha. I felt that nobody could understand my interest on that ferment until you offered us your support.

I am glad you found something interesting here too, Nico.

I have been told the sekowa backferment is not so difficult to use. I know I could buy a tin by means of the internet. Nevertheless I do not like the idea of buying regularly from abroad the basis of my everyday bread. For both ecological and economic reasons.

Do you know if it would be possible to buy the ferment and make once a "sekowa sourdough"  wich I could manage to perpetuate through feeding it, the same way as I´d do with a normal sourdough culture?

But what I would really enjoy would be to be able to make a little bit of "baker alchemy" at home and start the culture from scratch with the best quality ingredients I could find.

Thank you all for your replies!:-)

And good baking

Pablo

Hello again

I forgot this:

Please Sturmele and Syl, send me the adress of your blog, Any translated material would be great, thanks. I think I can understand a great deal of Italian, because I am spanish and our languages are "cousins" but I do not feel confident yet (and do not have dictionary!)

And: I would appreciate any information about your experiments to recreate the ferment at your home. Perhaps I can give you some good info related to the issue.

PS: What do you think about the book "pane gustoso e salutare" ? I am thinking on buying it....

Thank you again

Pablo

Hi Pablo,

I have never tried to make my own Sekowa Backferment, but there is an article that explains a little bit how the Backferment is made: 

http://www.schrotundkorn.de/1999/sk9901e4.htm

Please let me know if you manage recreating your own Backferment.

Have a nice (baking) weekend