February 9, 2009 - 6:54am
Desem problem
I have been trying to make desem bread. my starter seems stuck. it is having problems maturing. it smells a little sour kind of like vinegar. i have followed the formula in laurel's kitchen Bread Book and got a 2 brick loaves after the first week. I am assuming my desem isn't mature.
I used 100% Organic Hard Sprng Winter Wheat Berries
Ground it coarse
Used unclorinated, untreated water
Any thought suggestions. Thanks!
Share
Hi rc, and welcome to TFL!
From your description, it doesn't sound as if your starter ever achieved the level of yeast activity necessary to raise bread. I could be wrong of course, as your post is short.
Another TFLer, gaaarp has posted a very good tutorial on getting your starter started:
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/10251/starting-starter-sourdough-101-tutorial
I recommend reading gaaarp-Phyl's post and looking at the photos of his starter as it increases in activity. You want that bubbly concoction he has photographed with a spotlight to accentuate the "star" in starter.
Good luck!
David
Thanks for the welcome David. And that's a great post on starter. I have another sourdough starter that is fine, just like the one in the post. But, the desem starter, i don't think, should ever look like that according to Laurel's description:
"The fragance is not sour but wonderful-pleasantly cidery. Ripe desem looks like beige cottage cheese inside."
Any photos of a ripe desem on TFL? Thanks again.
this is what my desem looks like. maybe not perfect but I like it. ;-)))))
qahtan
That looks fabulous, especially compared to the first bricks i made.
Do you have a photo of your ripe desem starter?
Sorry no I didn't.
I like this because I can cut it wafer thin. ;-))))
There is NO white flour in this what so ever. qahtan
It takes a while to mature a starter using cool temperatures and a stiff dough. The yeast and bacteria reproduce and metabolize faster in a wetter, warmer environment.
I've made desem starters Laurel's way before, but I find it's really not worth the effort. I'd recommend making a starter using SourdoLady's method and later convert it to a stiff starter by taking a tablespoon of the wet starter and adding 1/3 cup water and 1 cup flour or, if you do it by weight, 50 grams water and 100 grams flour. Then, keep it stiff and keep it cool (under 65 degrees F and preferably in the mid 50s) as you feed, and it'll become a desem starter, just like Laurel's. Much easier.
Here's how I maintain a "Desem" starter. It has photos of ripe starter, so you can compare.
I can vouch for JMonkey's desem starter-conversion method, I maintained one for awhile about 2 years ago using his method to iniate the starter by converting a wet active starter to a stiff WW one stored and fed daily at cool temps (60-ish). I then used Laurel's method to maintain it for a few months. I used Allan Scott's desem bread recipe from The Bread Builders to actually make the bread shown in this post here, which also has some photos of what my ripe desem starter looked like (bread recipe also listed there).
There was a very long exchange about 2 years ago on the King Arthur baker's forum about the difficulty of making desem from scratch, where many advocated using a similar starter conversion method as a shortcut to a desem starter, since the theory is that the long-term maintenance as a stiff WW starter kept consistently cool is what will propogate and favor whatever combo of bacteria and yeast gives desem its buttery flavor, but perhaps Debra Wink can comment on that better if she sees this.
It's a tasty bread and I actually have another desem starter in the making that I hope to be able to use in a few weeks, I'd like to try making desem bread this time using freshly-ground whole wheat flour as I'm sure that will improve the flavor significantly. Good Luck! --Mountaindog
What a coincidence---I was involved in one of those very long desem exchanges :-) KyleW, myself, and a couple others worked on desem as a group project, but it seems like a lifetime ago now. I have done Laurel's method, as well as a conversion of my established white starter, and I agree with the consensus here, that converting your sourdough is a better way to go.
What I saw doing Laurel's method, was the same progression through the stages as making sourdough at room temp. It just took forever being cool and dry. Others may feel differently, but the only benefit I can see in "doing it the hard way," and wasting 10 pounds of good flour, is that it will separate the men from the boys ;-)
Hi Debra, glad you saw this thread - I thought that was you back then but was not sure! I remember getting quite a kick out of all the comments, some of which were quite humorous, at the Baking Circle re: the difficulty of getting desem starter active the long hard way, and I learned a lot from that forum, thank you as always for your efforts!
I don't keep a firm starter, when I have used enough of my starter which is very soft and almost sloppy, to make bread, I replenish what is left with water and W /W flour, leave it on the counter until it starts to work then put it in the fridge until next needed.
Don't ask me about hydration etc, as there is no way do I understand it. I have been baking and making bread for over 50 years and so far have had no complaints.
qahtan
Thank you all for your guidance. I'm off to try making the starter the "easy" way.
So happy I found this thread! I tried to make the elusive Laurel's desem but I didn't get past the first test loaf because I kept forgetting to feed the starter.
I wish I'd taken a picture of it, but the starter is basically a stiff ball of dough. It gets a hard gray crust on the outside which you may need to peel with a knife. The inside is moist and a little crumbly at first. As it ripens, it starts to be a little more sticky and cohesive. The informal test is what the inside of the starter smells like. Alcoholic if it hasn't been fed enough. Sour if it's too warm. When I was following the directions it had a wheat grassy smell. I used a very coarsely ground flour--still can see some wheat berry pieces-- milled just a week before I bought it. I order it through a local food distributor (Crown of Maine) and drive out to meet the delivery truck.
My 1 week test loaf did rise a little and tasted like a milder sourdough. I think it got warm during the 12 hour rise.
I turn a mini fridge almost all the way down and keep a thermometer in there. It's held 55 degrees pretty consistently. Had to play wih the knob a little-- turn the fridge down too much and it just turns off.