Another kind of sourdough bread-desem

November 6, 2009

The sour dough starter that we use here is called desem. This is a

flemish word meaning sourdough. All it contains is flour, water and

freshly ground whole wheat flour. It's a bit different than traditional

sourdough starters in that it is not a liquid. It's a round ball of

dough and we feed it weekly or twice a week depending on how much bread

and other goodies you want to make. It has a very slow fermentation and

my mother in law developed a way getting consistent loaves that rise

nicely for bread. I use her method just about every week. I also use it

for crisp bread, pancakes, english muffins and waffles. It has a very

rich flavor. My starter has been going for almost 5 years, my mother in

laws for nearly 20 now.

Because it doesn't have traditional yeast we developed a method of

baking with it to give us consistent results and I'm now testing many

recipes for my blog with this sourdough. I am selling the starter and a

kit with directions and some faq on my blog, for those who want a ready

made starter. I am also trying to gather information about how to make

desem sour starters and how to use desem in many different types of

recipes. I have information about how to make it yourself but it's not

complete information yet. The yeast and lacto bacteria are different

than in other kids of sourdoughs. It's really a symbiotic colony of

several different yeasts and as many as 11 different kinds of bacteria,

all working together to make the bread.

The yeast we buy at the store for bread making is really a gm organism.

As wonderful as freshly made bread is it would be far better if we could

get away from using the gm yeast and use something that is more healthy

for us. ~ Jo

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*Jo @ Desem Sourdough-Old World Bread *

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