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Whole Grain Desem Bread
Desembrood or sourdough bread is delicious and easy to make whether you are an experienced sourdough baker or new to natural leavening. The fruity notes of desem, a Flemish/Belgian sourdough starter, make the bread so aromatic and delicious. Desem is created with stone-milled whole grain flour at cool temperatures and is quite easy to maintain. Here’s a comprehensive guide on How to Make Desem, written by Jennifer Lapidus of Carolina Ground. The process of creating desem from scratch takes about two weeks. Once established, this “mother culture” lives in the refrigerator in a jar under a layer of whole grain flour.
The photos and instructions below show you how to build an offshoot desem levain to use in your dough and how to refresh your original desem. Just like regular sourdough starter, desem can be used with all sorts of flour. In the recipe notes, you’ll see hydration suggestions for substituting different wheat varieties into this recipe.
Desembrood (Whole Grain Sourdough Bread)
Here is a recipe for whole grain bread leavened with the Belgian style sourdough starter called desem. Created with stone-milled whole grain flour at cool temperatures, desem is a dryer starter with deep fruity notes. This desembrood is so delicious and the water amount can be shifted for different wheat flours (see notes).
Ingredients
Desem / Levain
Dough
Instructions
Desem/Levain (8-12 hours)
Dough Bulk Fermentation (4-8 hours)
Final Proof (1-16 hours)
Baking
Notes
This combination of hard white spring wheat and red fife wheat is quite manageable and yields a nice crumb at 81% hydration. The desem's flour and water are not included in these hydration calculations.
The following are suggested hydration amounts for several other wheat flours:
Shopping List
Hard White Spring Wheat Berries
Hard White Spring Whole Grain Flour
Heirloom Red Fife Wheat Berries
Red Fife Whole Grain Flour
Sourdough Starter (Dry)
Breadtopia’s Choice Kitchen Scale
$18.00Mockmill 100 Grain Mill
Dough and Storage Bucket w/Lid – 2 qt. Square
Oval Rattan Proofing Basket
Oval Proofing Basket Liner
Breadtopia Hearth Baker
Whole Grain Desem Bread