NO YEASTED BREADS (Naturally Risen Breads)We have a wonderful bakery here in our little village of Cowichan Bay. They make a variety of whole grain breads that they mill themselves including a line of naturally risen breads that do not have any yeast at all in them. Many of our customers ask how that is done. The bread has risen and has a great taste but has no yeast added. Basically these doughs get their yeast from the air around us, which is filled with bacteria or yeast. Interesting enough these yeasts will vary the taste of this type of bread depending on what part of the world it is made in. Naturally occurring yeast here in Canada will be give us a much different taste than naturally occurring yeast in Russia. This bread's unique character and its rise come from the starter--the spirit or soul, that gives life to the dough. The desem (that is what it is called in Baker's Circles) looks like a little wad of dough---but oh my!! It takes about tow weeks to get a desm starter going. The first five days--the desem's infancy, if you like--is spent in a special sort of incubator: a big bag of flour. On the sixth day the desem is moved to the covered crock or jar. You feed it flour and water every day this week and keep it carefully cool. (much the opposite to sourdough starter which we normally keep carefully warm). After two weeks the desem is nearly mature, but not quite. It still needs watching and nurturing until it achieves full vigor. Once you have a functioning desem you will want to bake with it every week and also to feed it twice a day. It's much like taking care of a new baby. That's the whole idea. I will take the next few posts to explain the process in detail. Starting the desem is so simple that providing for it would have been second nature before the Industrial Revolution: pure water, organic fresh ground whole wheat flour, and some time in a cool cellar to bring it to vigorous life. Today, to find unchlorinated water is not so easy, and most wheat is treated with chemicals. Not every house has a cellar, and even in the winter it isn't easy to find a place that you can keep at 50 to 60 degrees F. Finally, many of us lead lives sufficiently hectic that making a commitment to the regualr care of a starter dough seems like a luxury. But even considering all this, there is no reason to be intimidated; it can be done, it is not all that difficult, and once you get set up, making the bread is simplicity itself. Pure spring water is best (not distilled: bread dough does better when it 's water has minerals). If your tap water is otherwise good, you can dechlorinate it by boiling and leaving it uncovered overnight. Use this water at room temperature or cooler, to feed your desem and make up your dough. If you will be using a dough hook in the Bosch, the water should be cold. Coarsely ground and fresh organic whole wheat flour, preferably not more than five days from the milling, is the ideal flour to use. The flour you choose should be milled from hard red or white winter or spring wheats that have a high protein content. It must not be treated with pesticides, and it must have been milled cool in a clean mill. The Nutrimill does a great jof of this since it isn't grinding the wheat and creating friction. Because of these requirements, making a desem can tell you a lot about your flour. You will need at least 10 lbs. of flour for the desem's incubator, to surround it while it is developing. The desem itself requires about 7 cups of flour in the first five days. Because it's freshness is so important, it is well worth the trouble to grind this amount yourself. Make sure your mill is absolutely clean, or you may share the experience someone had when his desem grew a "cover crop" of green mold. If you own a Nutrimill or an older high speed mill make certain to blow it out by letting it run empty about 10 sec. and also wash any of the old flour that comes out from the cannister and/or mill itself. If milling your own flour, when you measure it, tap the sides of the measuring cup to compact the flour because it will be lighter and fluffier than bagged flour The temperature for incubating the desem is critical. Find a place that is between 50 to 65 degrees F. to keep the desem. This has been the hardest requirement for many people to meet. Above 70 degrees F. souring organisms are favored; below 50 degrees F. the leavening organisms hibernate. In the winter, a garage or porch that is unheated during the day may be ideal, or sometimes the back corner of a low cupboard has a cool, steady temperature. Spring and autumn may be better for making a desem if the weather is extreme in your area. If you aren't sure, a thermometer is worth getting. Time is the next step. It takes two weeks to develop a desem. During this period, to help the new starter get going, you need to feed it every day with a small portion of fresh flour and water. You can use your desem to bake with after the first week. Even when the desem is very young, the bread is delicious; in fact in some ways the flavour is most interesting at this stage. Our next Post will give you the blow by blow description of making the desem itself for the first week. 
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