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I just searched for Desem in recipes indexed by Eat Your Books. The three books that come up are Flower Power, The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book, and Southern Ground. This of course misses out-of-print books like The Bread Book by Thom Leonard, but at least we haven't missed anything obvious.

For today's Desem bread I made a proofing cradle from wood. I'm at the limit where my dough will sploof out into flat bread. A classic proofing basket is already wider than the wood frames I've been using for years. My frames had no bottom, but now I want to finish proofing in the fridge. For flavor, and as a bonus so the loaf better holds its shape. So now I needed a bottom. There are gaps by the four corners (which is fine for a proofing basket) so that wood expansion doesn't crack the box. Wood responds to changes in humidity by expanding across the grain. The poster child here is a beginner woodworker who makes cutting boards for gifts, and mixes end and side grains. Their boards crack. If one studies drawer construction, the bottoms float to avoid this issue. I prefer a chunkier solid proofing cradle, for thermal mass. You'd think my design would be everywhere, but I've never seen it before. In the same spirit as my artistic tirade above, this box uses my favorite cheater joinery. One shouldn't glue end grain without further support. People who understand wood believe that a hand cut dovetail joint displays the pinnacle of craftsmanship, even though box joints are stronger. People who make box joints tend to use jigs, then they look like every commercial box you've ever seen. What I do is plan and dry assemble my joinery using cabinet screws, then glue using the screws for clamping. Once the glue dries, I remove (and reuse) the cabinet screws, and replace them with Miller dowels. I then sand further and finish with Tried & True Original Wood Finish polymerized linseed oil and beeswax, which is food safe. My box is shown sunning in our yard, so the bread won't taste like linseed oil. This is dead simple joinery that I'd recommend to any casual woodworker. My friends who don't judge art by difficulty, or who are simply oblivious to measuring difficulty for wood joinery, love this style of construction.

I added her Daily Desem, which is about the same hydration. Yes, she calls for "full" extraction white and/or red whole wheat flours in the two recipes. Perhaps some people actually use 100% extraction flour? I put mine through a coarse sieve, ending up with 95% extraction, which can (nearly) handle 90% hydration. I'm going to drop a few percent at a time to see what happens.

Interesting. Is that 73% hydration with 100% extraction flour? That seems very low for whole, unsifted flour.

My impression is that as a rule, Desem bread uses high hydrations. I was startled, reading Flour Power, how little water she uses. My earlier sources use clumsy Imperial volume measurements, making comparisons less precise, but I believe that Southern Ground is closer to usual practice?

Tara relocated to Hamilton, VA about two years ago. This puts her about 2 hours north of me, and just west of Dulles Airport.

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Alas I noticed. We'll meet there, if not sooner. Oddly, Tara Jensen's web site makes no mention that I can discern as to the location of her upcoming workshop?

Desem also appears in Tara Jensen’s book “Flour Power.” The workshop I’m taking with her next month includes different levains, so I’m expecting some discussion on desem (or I’ll be raising my hand to ask). She did a stint in Asheville, NC, home of Carolina Ground, hence the lineage from Robertson to Scott to Lapidus to Jensen. Asheville also has a biennial Bread Festival: https://www.ashevillebreadfestival.com. Next one is Spring 2025. I’m thinking I need to make that pilgrimage — Asheville is just about 5 hours drive south of me.

Ha! My wife Laurie is my muse, saw where I was going with the Brød & Taylor Sourdough Home, and recalled reading the Desem section in The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book, back in the 1980's when it came out. I sensed a seminal work, akin to Richard Olney's Simple French Food spawning the Chez Panisse diaspora. Sure enough, Jennifer Lapidus read that same passage back in the day, and tracked down Laurel Robertson's dear friend Alan Scott, who became her mentor. She bought his 5,000 pound, 48-inch stone mill when he died before receiving it, and used it to found Carolina Ground. Her book Southern Ground is my new bible; as @Pequod discovered it's basically about Desem bread. I'm working through the Kindle edition until her signed copy arrives. Tracing back her sources, I found a used copy of The Bread Book by Thom Leonard. It's yet another take on Desem bread, worth reading. I've learned a few things I hadn't put together, such as slack bread could be overly digested by the sourdough starter. Meanwhile, my grain order from Janie's Mill arrived, to supplement our stocks of hard red spring wheat from Central Milling, and soft wheat and rye from Giusto's. Let the games begin!

Just noticed this new piece of gear, interesting but it won't replace a KK. Could be fun to play with though. https://www.fourneauoven.com/products/fourneau-wood-fired-grill-16-deluxe

I shouldn't have stopped by here today. I recently came across Desem in the "Southern Ground" book and am trying to resist the need to develop a Desem starter. Resistance is futile, it seems. Southern Ground tells the story of Carolina Ground, which works with farmers to restore historic grains, mill them, and supply the flour to regional bakeries. One of my favorite local bakeries, Albemarle Baking Company, uses their flour. Next month, I'm doing a workshop with Tara Jensen, a renowned baker and Carolina Ground advocate (@bakerhands on Instagram).

I know that I sound like a broken record but don't forget about our "friend", Powdered Brewers Wash (PBW), for cleaning stainless steel gear, like rotisserie parts and I'm sure that it would do a similar job on the hanger.

In Italy at the moment. Baby artichoke risotto for lunch was delicious.

Hi Paul. No, I did not use a drip pan. The set up is as per the photos - I didn't move or remove anything for the chickens' photo shoot. On low and slow cooks I put the smoke pot directly over the fire. That acts as my shield and I rarely use a drip pan for such cooks. No flare ups at all. I like rotisserie chicken for the crisp skin and the fact that the meat is "rarer" than it is for the low and slow smoked chicken. That said, I think you could cook hot and fast with the meat hanger, e.g. for a tandoori cook, but I have not tried that yet. Chances are you will need a drip pan for that but it depends on whether or not the longitudinal splitter could be used to keep the fire away from the drips. It is relatively easy to move the hook on the hanger to turn the chicken if you want a bit of the kiss of the fire on both sides. And yes, set up and clean up with the meat hanger is easier. No motor to haul out, attach and plug in. That said, I have no problem with cleaning the spit rotisserie. I just put the prongs in the dishwasher and run a sponge down the spit itself.

@tekobo just a couple of questions relating to using the Meat Hangers for the chickens. Did you put a drip pan under the chickens to avoid flare ups / messy clean up? I’m guessing you also own a rotisserie set up. Do you like the ease of the meat hanger over the rotisserie? It looks like the clean up and set up of the meat hanger would simpler. I’ve been on the fence on the meat hanger but may have to pull the trigger soon. All the best, Paul

I have actually tried to make sourdough crumpets using left over starter. The results were disastrous. I made sure there were no pix. Jealous to hear of @Pequod's instant success, if the truth be told. Liking your bread Dave. Although I might prefer the pen holder. I love the idea of individual slots for each pen. No fighting to separate them to determine which is working and which is not.

In defense of "no pics", my last two loaves of sourdough have radicalized me. They looked like I'd been set back five years, and they tasted the best I've ever made. Now I'm on a Desem bread bender. For a period I joined a pottery studio nearby. One open house evening, I bought five "lottery" tickets when it looked like no one would, just to support the place. Eventually, many tickets sold. Yet, somehow, all five of my tickets won. I got kidded about this for months. One of my prizes was a bowl the owner had made but couldn't sell. My neighbor is now very happy to have it. The bowl extended for an inconceivable distance. It displayed a mastery of technique, the impossibility of which would only be clear to someone who had spent years trying to master the potter's wheel. I have a strong aesthetic bias, that in fact it's easier to display exceptional technique than true originality. This is certainly true in math. Every artistic endeavor gets distorted by this, to the point where we teach ourselves to judge the difficulty of something, rather than its artistic merits. My favorite piece that I made at that pottery studio was a pen holder. In India, before styrofoam cups, disposable cups were made of clay, and after use they contributed to the road. I tried to imagine what a pen holder would look like, made a few seconds each in the millions, if that India instead needed pen holders. Needless to say, this work was divisive. At least no one could accuse me of flaunting my skills with clay. This applies to food, which can be tricky to assess by appearance alone.

I bet they tasted as good as they looked and they looked really good 😊

In addition to the multi-zone cooking Tony mentioned, all that room is very nice. The pancake cook in the pics is the first time I've made pancakes and they were all still warm when I ate them. Clean up is easier too! I do have to admit that I waffled about getting one for years due to that very valid point, but I really like pancakes and have always struggled with them - I always burned the first one and I struggled with keeping the first ones warm while the latter ones cooked. I tried several large frying pans as well as a griddle plate for my gas grill. The pans didn't really help with the "keep warm" issue and the grill griddle plate was a pain for grease management. I've always struggled with not playing with my food while it's cooking and having several things going on the griddle at the same let's me play with one thing that needs constant attention while leaving stuff that needs to be undisturbed while cooking alone. (I think that's also a reason I like cooking on the big Santa Maria grill - I can play with the fire instead of the food). I'm having a blast cooking on this thing!

No pix = Didn't happen, just sayin'!

There are no pics, but I made the King Arthur Crumpets with sourdough discard. I'm unsure how authentic they are, but they are very delicious. They are a thick, fluffy pancake—great use of sourdough discard.

Smothered, Covered, Chunked, Baby!!!

There are burners that you can turn on/off/adjust to create different cooking zones, just like we do in a KK.

The skin on the smoked chicken rendered beautifully. I did not eat the chicken immediately and I think that helped. Cooling the chickens down slowly and then refrigerating them meant that the moisture was retained and when we cut into them to make sandwiches for supper, the breasts were moist and delicious. You also got that "chicken jelly" near the bones and beneath the skin which added to the taste. The smoke flavour was good but I might try this again without extra smoke. Also plan to try tandoori and suya whole chicken. Options abound!