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 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 all 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 three parts flour. It's really dry!
If you were to try that ratio right away, you wouldn't be able to make it. I know. I've tried.
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 liquid.
And that's the key to this recipe.
 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.
Each few days (or each week if you haven't got the time or the inclination), 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 very stiff and rough one. It should be starting to resemble a piece of rock after each feed. This piece of rock will soften a little between feeds, making it possible to get even more flour into it each time.
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!
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 usually three to five days is adequate, if the starter is active in the first place. You can also use 300 gram chunks from your bedrock of dry dough starter as you go along, particularly if you feel you have proportionately more starter than you need for your usual breadmaking pattern. Recipes anywhere in the site can be employed - the dry dough you have made will actually be very useable after only a couple of feeds.
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 using 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.
To buy fresh flour for sourdough starter, have a look at the Ingredients Supply Section in SourdoughBaker Shop
For more information about Sourdough Starters, follow the links below by title:
Happy Sourdough Baking!
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