I am in charge of a 150th anniversary celebration of a church cookbook that includes several "light biscuit" and "roll" recipes using a yeast starter. The recipe for starter given in the cookbook involves hops (difficult for me to find). I'm wondering if I could use the mother starter (barm)  from Peter Reinhart's BBA that I keep on hand in place of the "yeast" called for in the two recipes below:

"Light Biscuit"

1 quart warm milk

3/4 c lard and butter mixed

3/4 c yeast

2 T sugar

1 t salt

flour to make a soft dough

The dough sits overnight and is then rolled, cut, and risen again before baking.

"Rolls"

Pint scalded and cooled milk

1/2 c yeast or 1/3 cake compressed yeast (Anyone have an idea how many ounces a 19th century yeast cake had?)

1 T sugar

a little salt

butter the size of an egg

1 quart flour

The dough "stands until light" and then is kneaded with additional flour (for half an hour!). It rises again, is rolled, cut into rounds that are folded into halves (sounds a bit like Parker House rolls).

Many thanks for any advice!

I just baked Mamie's Oat Meal Bread from Wild Yeast (with a few small adaptations) and wanted to report that it's great. If you're looking for a perfect sandwich loaf, with a beautiful texture and flavor, I urge you to give it a try.

Photos and recipe are at Flour Girl and, of course, at Wild Yeast.

Happy baking!

Flour Girl

Hi everyone,

I've been making reasonably nice bread with a wild culture that I've been maintaining for probably around 6 months.  It seems fairly strong and my loaves proof nice, but when I started making bread again with dry yeast, I noticed the commercial yeast tends to spring much more in the oven.  Is this just a "fact of life," or do you think I can encourage my culture to perform better in the heat?

Thanks, this is my first post after reading for months!

Chris

I'm writing a novel about a baker and I think I just blew it.  Near the end of the book, she has about four hours to bake a loaf of bread from "start" (in this case, kneading final dough) to "finish" (in this case, pulling it out of the oven).  She knows nothing about baking at the beginning of the book, and to keep things "authentic" I've been learning along with her. 

So here's my problem.  About fifty pages ago I realized that my character would decide late in the game to use a wild yeast starter.  Genius that I am, I didn't check to see how long it takes to rise/proof a wild yeast loaf.  I found a few hybrid (commercial and wild yeast) recipes, but to keep true to her character, I need to find something that only uses wild yeast starter.

So am I out of luck, or are there short-window recipes out there that use only wild yeast?  Overnight retards and barms are no problem, but she must knead and bake within those four hours!  Help!

So I have been mucking about with my wild yeast sourdough starter a lot over the last few weeks. I made pain poilane, and a traditional american style sourdough, and was thinking..."what else can i do with this starter?"

The answer? Sourdough croissants!

I know this could fall in the pastry category, but decided that the wild yeast starter aspect kinda throws it into the realm of the sourdough junkie. I've gotta say, they turned out great. I even made some with chocolate in the middle. I wrote more about them here:

http://www.improveyourbaking.com/2009/01/21/sourdough-croissants/

Hopefully this will spark some interesting sourdough ideas. I'd love to here more. I'm planning on writing about the chocolate ones tonight.

This is my first post here.  I'm at a loss as to what has happened, but my firm wild yeast starter (1:1:2, starter:water:flour) is no longer rising when I feed it?  I learned to bake with my mother as a child and, when I left home, she gave me a small piece of her starter.  I've been baking sourdough on my own with it for 3 years and it has always just worked.  I bake 2x a week and store the starter in the fridge or a cool balcony between bakes.  I used to feed it 12 hrs before I bake and it used to rise to double its volume in 8-12 hrs depending on temperature.  At present, I'm trying to revive it with daily feedings of bottled spring water and organic stone-ground flower (it's being kept at 78-79F).  Ordinarily, I just use all-purpose flour and tap water but I'm getting desperate!  I can see bubbles in the bottom of the glass jar but the rise is very slow and less than 25% in volume after 24 hrs.  The smell seems to be less fruity (more sour) and it tastes more acidic than it used to.  I've gone to the library and read a few books but I'm running out of ideas.  It has been 2 weeks of feedings with no real change.  Does anyone have any advise for promoting what is left of my yeast to grow?  Sadly, my mom has dementia so my #1 resource can no longer offer me much help.

I am making my first loaf of bread with liquid levain.  It seeems to be rising so assuming that is a good sign!  When you refresh levain do you have to discard some of it or can you just keep feeding it?  I am very new at this but determined to get it all down!  I will post pictures of my finished product.  

I decided to post pix of my motherdough which is where this all started. It has a very short history at this time but hopefully it will last a few years and I can pass it down and around. Flour and water.

E