Dry Dough Sourdough Starter Method
Dry Dough Sourdough Starter is one for the keenest sourdough bakers among you.
It makes great sourdough bread, with a deep, rich SOUR flavour, which, despite the capitalisation, isn't harsh at all. It's just 'deep', in the same way that a mature wine is 'deep'.
It can be made from scratch, or you can convert liquid starter, or even a chunk of old dough.
Dry dough sourdough starter keeps for at least 2 weeks between feeds, once established and at the correct consistency.
Dry dough sourdough starter is quite similar to the Flemish method commonly known as 'Desem', which one of my readers (thanks Julie, you've started me on a Quest!) introduced me to.
If all this technique which follows looks like it's all a bit hard, it is. I suggest you invest $25 in some fresh Desem Sourdough Starter from SourdoughBaker Shop. This isn't just any starter - it has been kept continuously for twenty years, and has levened, over its 20 year life span so far, literally millions of loaves of bread here in Australia and overseas.
It's very, very powerful, and has a truly complex flavour, as only something this old can have. And of course, one batch can be continued forever at your place.
It's funny - in sourdough land, nothing under the sun is new, and yet everything is as well. Last century I used a very similar method to this 'desem' in our Katoomba bakery to make my 72 hour 100% whole rye bread.
(Note: This recipe will appear in SourdoughBaker from whoa to go down the track - but I need a mixer to do it. Being obsessive as I am, I was determined to cover only hand made bread, so I sold my beautiful Electrolux 'lazy arm' mixer a couple of years ago. A rare and beautiful thing, and I would welcome it back again any time. Soon I'll be getting into mixer based recipes once again, because there's quite a bit you can do with a mixer which is difficult to do by hand. But I digress...)
This method, where the starter is kept very dry, is also quite similar to the 'cowboy starter' used by cowboys in the USA. You can store this type of sourdough stater quite successfully inside a bag of flour. I freight it around the country all the time, and everyone reports a successful starter birth!
I've converted liquid starter for this recipe, because it was already active. It seems to be working very well after a few months, and in fact has become my preferred leaven at present.
The basic ratio for Dry Dough Sourdough Starter is one part water to two parts flour. It's like a dough, but you can vary the amount of dryness according to your requirements. However, when establishing a dry dough starter, the ratio of flour doesn't really matter - it's the texture of the dry dough starter that you are looking for.
As sourdough starter becomes active, it transforms flour and water physically. What starts off looking like dough, soon becomes a very thick batter.
This happens because the micro environment in the sourdough starter ingests the flour and adds enzymes to it, which makes better food for the culture to eat. It's a process which makes sourdough starter slowly become more liquid. Eventually, if the starter becomes too acidic, it will turn to a state that is something like a stringy paste. By adding flour at this stage without water, a desem can be quickly established.Many a leftover dough has become a desem in this manner!
I have found through running a desem for the past few months in my bakery, SourdoughBaker Cafe that the most workable consistency from a baker's perspective is to maintain the dry dough like a heavy sponge - you can tear it with your hands, and it is quite dry and stable, without being tough. Once a sponge state has been reached, the dry dough starter holds for many weeks if necessary.
And that's the key to this recipe.
Establishing a Dry Dough Starter
 If you begin your dry dough starter with liquid sourdough starter, simply add flour by pouring enough to cover the top of the starter with about a centimetre of flour. Start to combine the flour by pushing it with your fingers through the liquid starter mixture below. Each time you do this, the mixture will become thicker. After you've got most of the flour in, you'll need to knead a bit, which will help to get all the flour into it. You want to end up with a tough dough, so keep adding flour until this is achieved, a little at a time. Then you simply loosely lid the container of starter you've made, and put it in the fridge.
In a week, return to your starter, and you should repeat this process, adding enough flour to the now sticky mixture do be able to knead the ferment like you would a dough - albeit a quite stiff and rough one. It should be starting to resemble a piece of rock. This piece of rock will soften a little between feeds.
In a week, add a drizzle of water and add just enough flour to return it to a dough state. Push it through with your fingers as before.
In a few days, you will have a thick, sponge like starter, which can be easily maintained.
You can add a little water when you feed the dry dough starter, to assist with getting more flour into it. You do not want to lose the structure of the dough you have made at any time in the process. Similarly, the regular carbohydrate replenishment helps to sweeten the sourdough. Really! When I'm just making a couple of loaves each week, I run a base of about 600 grams, which allows me to get a couple of uses before feeding is necessary. It just so happens that my starter container is about 1.25 litre capacity, so I have marked the side with texta where to fill it to each time I feed.
You don't actually need to feed it much either - the idea with the first stage of this process is to substantially increase the production of a particular kind of enzyme, which is not dominant in liquid sourdough starters. To do this, you need to nurture a 'base load' of ferment with the right consistency.
 Feeding only needs to occur when the dry dough has softened substantially. I leave mine in the fridge, and after 3 to 5 days it is ready for use again, even after a major feed. Dry dough starter can be used in any of the Recipes anywhere in the site - but at half the amount in the recipe. Dry dough starter is strong, and likes to be used in conjunction with a pre ferment, so very little is needed.
Initially, each time you have fed a dry dough starter, it should end up quite tough and dry. It will be ready for use approximately three to five days later.
 After a few feeds, you will have established your dry dough starter. It is like all starters - over a period of time, all the elements seem to find a comfortable balance. You'll find these starters make lovely bread after a few months, maintaining a regular feeding and usage pattern all the while.
Flours used to feed a dry dough starter
It's best to feed the starter with the types of flour needed predominantly in the breads you prefer to make.
- For a traditional desem style starter, you'll need fresh to feed with wholewheat flour, coarsely ground. This will deliver very fulsome breads, no matter what flour is in the bread recipe.
- For a pumpernickel rye bread, or sweet rye sourdough, you'll need to feed it rye meal.
- For a classic loose textured sourdough, feed with white organic wheat flour. Cake flour is pretty good if you can get it.
- For multigrain breads, try a 'lite' flour, which will help with rise too.
- You can feed desem or dry dough with a variety of flours over time - mine is now so strong that whatever I feed it tends to become absorbed wholly within a few days anyway.
Another important requirement for good sourdough starter of any kind is fresh organic flour. The fresher the flour, the more wild yeasts the grain itself will be sustaining. This wild yeast only has a short life, so flour that is only a few months old will be sustaining very low levels of wild yeast. While these will still eventually get a fermentataion process happening, old flours are simply not a patch on fresh ones when it comes to sourdough starter.
For more information on using a desem starter, have a look here.
For more information about Sourdough Starters, follow the links below by title:
Happy Sourdough Baking!
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