Desem/Motherdough ~ Gee What Won't I Do?
Yep, just messin around. I like the flavor of Desem so much, and Motherdough is beyond great, that I thought I would combine them. I started out the night before baking, with a preferment, using Desem combined with water/flour/etc. I set it out overnight at room temperature and next morning it looked like this:

Then I added some Motherdough which, if you didn’t know, is just using a vigorous starter kept at 80% hydration (for me anyway) and refrigerated(it developes the flavor). The motherdough looked like this:

I added more water, flour, salt, some oil and came up with a nice dough which only took three hours to ferment, although I let it go four. It then looked like this after bulk fermentation:

It was a little on the sticky side, but I shaped up the loaves and weighed them out at just over 2 lbs each and then put them to proof in bannetons:

The proofing rate slowed a bit and they took 2.5 hours to proof and really needed 3, but I was running out of time before I needed to make dinner. So…. here is the first loaf:
(Sorry about the poor quality of pics, no sun outside, and poor lighting inside. I still need a lightbox or something).

The second loaf I baked a little hotter as the first one came out a bit light:

The third loaf:

Here are some pics of the crumb:


The bread flavor is really great! It is a very nice tangy sour. The crust was wonderful, crusty and crispy. This was altogether a great marriage between two great flavored starters.
I got the idea of using Desem starter as a flavoring because the Whole Wheat tastes so terrific after fermenting with Desem, I thought it would interesting to use it as the flavoring besides adding another vigorous starter as a complement.
I really am having so much fun baking with sourdough. I love experimenting and doing off the wall things with it. I also baked another Soft Sourdough a couple of days ago using Desem again as a flavoring. It came out wonderful and makes terrific sandwiches and toast. I haven’t had a lot of time for posting though.
If you notice carefully behind the pictures of the bread, the walls are barren and the wallpaper is ripped off. I am redoing the room by repainting the ceiling and wallpapering. Then comes the carpet. So you see, even though I am still baking, I am extra busy! If I get a chance, I will post about the soft sourdough, if I don’t …. I will continue on…. till next baking day,
Teresa