This is the continuation of my accounts of making desem bread [1], which is made with just flour, water, salt and nothing else. It's somewhere between regular baking and a science project.
The desem isn't as active today, but it's certainly moving and growing. This is how the incubator-pot looks when I opened it up:
The dough is rising and cracking the surface of the smoothed out flour.
I treat it just as I have the previous two days - cut away half, soften the remainder with about 1/4 cup of pure (bottled) water, add 1 cup of organic whole-wheat flour, knead and round into a ball, and re-bury in the flour of the incubator-pot.
In case you think I am totally bonkers for doing this...believe me, it only takes a few moments out of the day, and it's as interesting as those science experiments I used to do growing up. And, the results are well worth it.
Tomorrow the desem will leave its incubator, to start its way towards becoming a "mother" for future loaves of delectable, natural-yeast bread.
I potter off to make myself a fishfinger buttle.
Links:
[1] http://www.justhungry.com/2003/12/desem_day_0.html