Weird-ass wild yeast

[wryter2000]

A few years ago, I started some wild yeast for sourdough. I've been feeding it in anticipation of finding exactly the recipe I want for bread. I finally figured the heck with that. What's the point if I'm not going to use it?

So, a few weeks ago, I mixed some with some flour, honey, salt, and left-over mashed potatoes. Next day, I beat in some milk and melted butter and put in the Kitchen Aid, adding flour until I got the consistency I wanted. It took over a day for the yeast to get really excited. After that, I couldn't get it to stop. I finally formed it into two small free-form loaves and cooked them on the pizza stone in a hot oven. (Tossed in about a half-cup of water for steam.) It came out pretty good, except that I hadn't used enough salt. I ate it all, though.

This weekend, I decided to try again. I left out the honey because I didn't like that flavor too much and left out the mashed potatoes because I didn't have any left-overs. The next day, I used olive oil instead of butter and water instead of milk.

Two days later, it's sitting there, kind of rising but not very enthusiastically. However, it's full of big bubbles. How can it have big bubbles if it hasn't climbed up the side of the huge, pyrex measuring cup? Could it be I coated it with too much oil and it can't grab on?

I don't know what this thing is going to be like, but it sure is cheap fun.

BTW, something I saw a lady do on Julia Child with bigo (sp?) -- a very wet dough. Let the loaf rise on a piece of parchment paper and invert the loaf onto the pizza stone. You can leave the paper there for a few minutes because it's oven safe. Then, just peel it off and continue baking. Much easier than dealing with a peel, imho.

[Duer 157099]

1. So what does it mean to "start some wild yeast"?

I mean, I know what it means, but how do you do it?

Just let whatever is flying around in the house land and start nurturing it?

[hippywife]

3. Feast your eyes!

I've never done it but there was an episode of Baking with Julia that showed how it was done. Starting with grapes just like Warpy said.

Luckily there is a treasure trove of videos! :bounce:

http://pbs-juliachild.onstreammedia.com/cgi-bin/visearch?user=pbs-juliachild&template=template.html&query=+ClipCategory%3ABreads+ClipCategory%3ABaked+ClipCategory%3AGoods&category=ClipCategory%3ABreads+ClipCategory%3ABaked+ClipCategory%3AGoods&ingredients=0&chef=0&project=0&viKeyword=&page=3

[wryter2000]

5. How I did it

I mixed some flour with an equal volume of water and some sugar and left it out. The next day, I had bubbles.

I've read that, while we usually think of capturing yeast out of the air, it usually comes in on our flour. It's fun stuff to play with.

KitchenWitch really knows how to do this much better than I do.

[Warpy]

2. Wild yeasts are chancy. Some of them are lovely

and will give you a sourdough starter you can use for years. Others are so nasty you won't be able to get past the sniff test from across the room.

My own favorite for sourdough starter uses crushed red grapes, flour and water. The grapes are already growing mild wine yeast. The one problem I had was that it was a little wimpy for rising bread. It imparted a great flavor to the loaves, so I just supplemented it with some Red Star yeast.

I kept it going for over a year until a period of illness caused me to skip its regular maintenance and I had an overgrowth of nasty wild yeast.

I'll probably get another one started this fall when grapes are in season.

[wryter2000]

4. Mine's wimpy

But it makes great tasting bread when it works. I'm thinking I'm going to put this mass in a bowl and keep it in the fridge to see what it does.

As I said, it's cheap fun.

[housewolf]

11. I've made starters with grapes

They all "took" and turned out quite nice. I like to use organic grapes if I can find them although non-organic also worked. I've used as few as 3 -6 grapes to as many as a small bunch. I've also made starters from raisins (a la Peter Reinhart), white flour only, rye flour only, and whole wheat flour only. Had good luck with all of them. You guys are makin' me think about starting one up again... hmmmmmm....

[housewolf]

6. If you want to raise bread with a sourdough starter only (no added yeast)

you need to start with a "fully active" starter - that means a starter that you can "double" (add a qry of water & flour equal to the amount of starter that you "start" with) then let it sit (activate) for 8 hours or so (depends on the speed of the specific microbes you're "caught" in you starter). This is called "feeding" your starter. What you're looking for is for the starter to double in volume in about 8 hours (or so).

So say you take 1 cup of starter from your refrigerator and feed it with 1/2 cup water and 1/2 cup flour and let it sit out. If your starter is healthy enough to rise bread, at the end of its "cycle" (8 hrs or so, however long your starter's cycle is), the starter will have risen from 1 cup to 2. Then it's active enough to rise a loaf of bread.

At that point, return some of the fully-activated starter to the refrigerator to save for the next time and add the flour, water and other ingredients from your recipe and knead your bread dough. Generally, starter-only doughs rise more slowly than "powdered yeast" risen doughs.

Yeast "love" honey and potatoes, so probably they contributed to the previous starter's robustness.

Re: baking on parchment paper - I usually bake free-form bread on parchment, it's MUCH easier and keeps the oven cleaner too because you need less corn meal or whatever grain you use to keep the dough from sticking to the peel.

[wryter2000]

8. You're the expert

I said Kitchen Witch in error. Sorry. :banghead:

I love your tips on bread making. I wish I had more time to experiment.

[housewolf]

9. Good luck with your sourdough

There is something very satisfying about working with a sourdough starter - there is a whole almost metaphysical dimension if one wishes to explore that aspect along with the pure deliciousness of good sourdough bread. But yes, it does take some time and planning. The good/bad news is that time is the friend of sourdough bread - it's time that develops the flavor but there's a time-window for using the starter when it's fully active. That's why many people prefer to make yeasted bread and add some starter for flavor in order to control the process.

There is a lot to learn, explore and experiment with if the wild yeasts catch you and you follow their path.

I am happy to be of help so feel free to post your questions here or pm me. Others here are also knowledgable and love to help too.

Happy bread making!

[pinto]

7. Sounds interesting...I'm *zilch* as a baker, yet want to learn breads.

Don't much like store bought, locally, and only need small loaves. Figure if I learn to make them myself I can make good small loaves myself. I like a lunch of fresh bread, cheese, dried fruit and olives...

[housewolf]

10. If you are wanting to learn how to bake bread

If you are interested in whole grain breads, the best book for learning is "The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book" - it's well-written and well-illustrated taking you step-by-step through the bread-baking process by hand. It's a great primer on breadbaking even if you want to make white breads, but all the recipes are for whole grains so if it's whites you want, you'll need to apply the techniques to other recipes which is easy to do.

You also might want to start with a bread machine. You could pick up one very cheaply at a local thrift shop, use it to mix & rise your dough, then you can shape it into a loaf form (or other forms) and bake it in your oven. Or you may decide to experiment with baking the bread in the bread machine, too. They are great conveniences for people who love homemade bread.

Many people love to knead bread by hand, of course, and others find a good stand mixer like a KitchenAid (or something similiar) to be indispensible for mixing and kneading bread dough.

There is nothing quite as good as homemade bread so ... Go for it! It's fun and rewarding in many ways. There's lots of good help here, too.

[Tab]

14. My wife is putting our bread machine up on eBay

(i don't think she's done it already). It's barely been used (twice, maybe) - I have a KitchenAid for when I want to do something, which isn't that often other than for pizza, since I'm more of a cook than a baker. It is a quite nice machine, though. I can get more info if you want, I don't know what she was going to ask for it.

[NashVegas]

12. I Brought Home Some Concord Grapes

They don't taste like the Concord grapes of my childhood, but then I was a child of the Northeast, and these are Concord grapes of Tennessee.

Anyway, they have a lovely coat of yeast on the skins. ...

[noamnety]

13. I used to have a batch of sourdough starter

that I started on my own from microbes or whatever in the air. I started it when my daughter had bronchitis, so we affectionately termed the loaves from it bronchitis bread, figuring that might be what was fermenting in the jar.

This is my favorite site for learning to make starter from scratch - it has photos of each stage of the process: http://chefsimon.com/levan_ang.htm

It's the poem at the end of the page, though, that makes it.

[housewolf]

15. Great pictures!

It's hard to photo all the stages of activating a sourdough starter, but Chef Simon did a good job.

Thanks for posting

[NashVegas]

16. UPDATE / Video

Grapes at 3 days. Juice is bubbly and ready to be combined with flour (after straining).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAWKm_vcPb8

I'd like to state for the record: there's something totally cool about handling doughs made from fresh yeast. They feel "alive" in ways doughs from powdered yeasts just don't, to me.

[NashVegas]

17. Update Deux

Here's what it looked like on day 4, 24 hours after the grapes had been strained & the brew combined w/flour & water. Still pink.



And here's a vid so you can see what it does when poked:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80Aj-ylA8iA

Here's what it looked like today, 6 hours after a dump & pump: (no more pink)



and how it behaved:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPD-hTstlXY