Desem starter

www.sysmatrix.net/~jkandell/Desem-web-jk6.doc is an interesting article on Desem, by Jonathen Kandell.  In this article he presents a much less strict method of making desem, as well as suggestions for baking with it.

I’m not a microbiologist and I don’t play on on TV, but my readings in Island Biogeography, decades-old experience with desem and recent experience making a wild yeast starter in a class at SFBI all align with much of Jonathan Kandell’s Primer.

In the mid-80s my kids and I spend a wonderful day with Alan Scott and his family at the end of which I brought home a piece of desem from which I started many lovely loaves. I don’t remember what finally happened (probably neglect) to that desem but do recall that it changed a little over time, not for the better or worse, just different.

Along with the influences of temperature regimes that Laurel’s book held in high importance and Jonathan’s primer discounts somewhat, I think biogeography may have played a significant role as well.

Whether we begin with a genuine desem or a real San Francisco Sourdough Starter, when we take it home we feed it there. Ideally with freshly ground whole wheat flour in the case of desem. That flour or the unbleached white that feeds any other starter contains its own complement of yeasts and bacteria imported from the fields in which the wheat grew.

The addition of yeasts and bacteria from flour feeding a starter will produce interactions with the microbes already thriving in the starter. Some will go extinct in the new island of Levain to which we have introduced them. Some will coexist side-by-side with the older inhabitants. Some may come to represent a greater and greater part of Levain’s biota. Some of the older residents may become even more prominent in the new mix, or less, or even go extinct. Eventually an equilibrium will be struck...at least until flour from another source (different miller or different species: rye, spelt, kamut, etc.) is introduced.

Compared to oceanic islands, coastal islands have floras and faunas much more like those of the nearest mainland. I suspect that if I received a desem or other starter from a friend and kept it under the same conditions of temperature and hydration—and fed it from the same sack of flour (mainland) as my current starter, that eventually they would be very similar if not indistinguishable. Perhaps someone within this community has an experience of doing just that.

Incidentally, I count myself fortunate to have been guided through the building of a new liquid levain starter during SFBI’s Wild Yeast course (Artisan II). Had I produced on my own a mix that stank the way that one did after 24 hours, I think I would have concluded I’d done something wrong and thrown it out, but three days later it smelled lovely and powered lofty loaves that were delicious.

Mangochutney, I have an updated version of my desem instructions at 

[link updated in comment at top of thread]

Thank you Mangochutney and esp Thank you, jkandell!

I had also recently read Laurel's directions for desem and was in awe of how much flour she recommended. My reaction was to immediately dismiss doing it. I keep a small amount of a polish consistency SD starter and her method seemed too large and wasteful a scale for me. Grapesized starter and building for a weekly bake, I can handle.

Now I might try this! I grind my own flour from hard red spring wheat and have recently been experimenting with non-wheat flours, as well. It will be interesting to see how things go.

Desem has become a "thing" since this discussion. I took a peak at Jensen's instructions in Flour Power, and was pleased but surprised she matches both the process and baker's percentages in the Primer almost exactly.  This was unexpected, since my percentages were so different from Laurels.  Jensen bakes in North Carolina and I in Tucson AZ (where one rarely has a day staying below 70F).  Her mentor Lapidus favors 75% hydration for all stages of the desem, while Jensen uses the 50-60% I do, and gradually worki up to 70-80 from fridge to loaf. 

I'm more convinced than ever that process for desem isn't the key (you have to find your own) so long as you roughly follow a pain-au-levain. Rather, the defining features of desem are 1) 100% whole wheat (water salt), 2) 100% natural leavening, 3) nutty, sweet profile-- not allowed to sour even a little.  That last bit is the key.  And souring with whole grain (a challenge) can be avoided by any and all (a) low temperatures, (b) large percent starter to accelerate fermentation, (c) salt.  The rub is you want a long 4 hour or so bulk fermentation yet you don't want it to get sour. So you've created a dilemma by mixing whole grain + long time + no sour. 

The new authors do seem to follow the current trend toward high hydration loaves. I admit I'm out of the norm to prefer a slightly less hydrated loaf with a tighter crumb, which usually allows free standing rounds.  I don't want butter and toppings to fall through the holes. But that's me not desem.

One minor difference in the primer and these new writings is my recommendation to start a new desem by soaking and mashing soaked whole wheat kernels, which then gets extended with good quality commercial flour. She uses flour from the very the start; I guess if you grind your own flour the two are the same, but I don't own a mill.  I just coat in flour and don't bury it, because I'm too cheap to waste all that flour.  I had just assumed the action would be greater with kernels, but maybe I should I have tested that with just using good old flour cause they're correct. Especially because other starters I've converted fo firm whole wheat don't end up tasting much different.