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JimHi Big Mama,
Basically dry sausages were historically made without UMAi Dry, InstaCure #2, Powdered dextrose and definitely Bactoferm. Certainly, the ancient Romans and Greeks did not have any of these at their disposal.
One may still do it this way and live. We have many customers who swear by their recipes that do not include one or more of above mentioned ingredients. Whether you go on this forum or any other, there will be someone who successfully made dry sausage by substituting or eliminating some ingredients.
I have a couple of questions when I see this:
1. Can one replicate the results successfully from one time to the next?
2. Why do most meat processors that are in this for the long haul use these relatively expensive ingredients?
You can read their ingredient labels next time you see a dry salami in your local store.
3. Why do yogurt manufacturers use cultures instead of just letting the milk curdle?
4. Why do the wine manufacturers use special wine yeasts these days, when seemingly they can just let the grapes do their own thing?
My suspicion is that the results are more predictable if one uses these modern ingredients, since they were created specifically for this purpose. Apologies if this seems like a tirade.