wild yeast

A few mornings ago, I imagined that my wild yeast starter was all ready to make bread. I announced I would make focaccia with it to go with that evening's dinner of puy lentils and sausage. Silly me. I should have known this would be a mistake. My failures with my wild yeast are legion this winter. The focaccia dough failed entirely to rise. Not even a glimmer of a bubble. After several hours. So I stuck the slumping lump of dough in the fridge and made another announcement: I would make chapatis with wild yeast (ha) dough the next day, because they're made without yeast anyway. What a brilliant save!! The chapatis tasted faintly sour but they were absolutely wonderful. Especially when you consider that the dough might have been baked into a spectacularly terrible focaccia.

• recipes for flatbread, including chapatis and focaccia
• Moringa Leaf Omelette and Chapatis

It has been driving me crazy to just throw away the leftovers after feeding our wild yeast starter. Especially as it seems to be in perfectly good condition. I know it's just a couple of tablespoons of flour but still it just seems wrong even to compost it. So now, every time I feed the starter, I have been adding whatever is left over to biscuits or muffins or even bread that is made with commercial yeast.

At first, I was just going to make cheese baking powder biscuits. But then I suddenly thought that cheese pinwheels would be fun. I already knew that adding the left over sludge wouldn't disturb the biscuit dough at all. That's one of the great things about baking powder biscuits. They're so forgiving. Well, pretty forgiving, anyway...

There are some hazards to not measuring... perhaps I added a tiny bit too much cheese. See how it exploded out of the pinwheels in the baking.

Because there was plenty of cheese, these biscuits didn't need any butter, although a little butter was good too. Wheee! So much for adding olive oil instead of lard or shortening to the dough to make the biscuits better for us....

Here is what I did to make the pinwheels:

• cheese pinwheels recipe

I have really been struggling to get our wild yeast bread to be less sour. This time, I added malt powder to give the dough a little sugar rush. I contemplated adding a bit of baking soda as well to bring the acidity down. But not really knowing the science of it, I decided against it. One experiment at a time....

I also added a tiny bit (1/16 tsp) of active dry yeast to the bread, because I've been getting so much flack about flat bread.

I was so pleased at how it had risen that I even tried slashing one of the loaves (while it was proofing, it had a little bird cookie cutter balanced on top - even before baking, it was impossible to see the bird design!) I just don’t know how you others do it.

I admit it; my slashing technique stinks!

It is less sour tasting. Even though the taste is pretty good, I'd still like to make a completely unsour wild yeast bread - without using even a trace of commercial yeast.

• Here is the recipe I used: Wild Bread with Malt

Tomorrow when I feed the wild yeast, I plan to try bwraith's method of maintenance to see if that will lessen the sourness.

Even though it has been decreed that this is one of my more successful attempts, I am still feeling defeated and just about ready to pack it in and toss the wild yeast out. It was devastating (well, maybe not "devastating"... perhaps "deflating" would be a better choice of word) to have to buy bread at Christmas time because my bread was so sour.

I have to admit that baking bread with commercial yeast is WAY easier!

After looking at our bagel recipe sit for months on my recipe stand, I finally made bagels! I don't know why I waited so long. Because I adore bagels....

After admiring Susan's (Wild Yeast) bagels several times, I decided to copy her and use my wild yeast starter too.

And how did the bagels taste? Well, I liked them! I loved them on their own and also with goat's cheese and red currant jelly. And coffee. Of course.

The bagels are firm and chewy on the outside and soft and chewy on the inside - just the way that bagels should be (or at least I think so....) Another taster said that there was too much taste of sourdough and not enough of malt. I confess that I didn't really taste the sourness but am certainly willing to tone it down.

Any ideas on how to go about doing that? Can I just add more malt to the dough?

Here is the recipe I used:

• wild bagels

This must be bagel season! I see that FloydM has just made bagels too.

Last week, I got pay back for laughing at Jenn's (Leftover Queen) misfortunes. There I was just hitting "send" on my reply to Susan's (Wild Yeast) hilarious account when I realized how much time had gone by since I had put the buns in the oven. And smelled that unmistakable smell of sugar. Burnt sugar....

It really was too bad too. The buns were going to be fantastic! In the recipe, I had used about 1½ cups of wild starter (around 750gm on my rotten scale) and only ¼ tsp active dry yeast rather than the 2½ tsp of active dry yeast called for. I also reduced the amount of water to 1¾ cup rather than 2 cups. (1 cup milk, ¾ water) Here is the recipe I followed to make 16 buns:

• cinnamon buns recipe (commercial yeast version)

The resulting dough was beautifully silky and elastic and rose only a tiny bit slower than the commercial yeast versions. In fact, I was a little sorry that I had added any commercial yeast at all.

And I did set the timer.... (I did!!!)

Amazingly, once most of the black had been scraped off, the buns were delicious!

...perhaps I should always burn them on the bottom (bite my tongue!!!)

(Next time I make the buns, I think I'll use only wild yeast. And when I put the buns in the oven, I'll set two timers. Maybe three....)

(There are a few more photos at blog from OUR kitchen)

As soon as I saw Susan's (Wild Yeast) post entitled "Semolina Bread with Currants, Fennel, Pine Nuts", I knew I HAD to make it. (Make sure to take a look at Susan's bread.)

I can't decide what I like more about this bread.
The aroma of it baking?

• Fennel!

The flavour?

• The currants! The fennel! The slight hint of sourdough flavour from the wild yeast!

Sliced warm with roccolo cheese? Toasted with butter?

• It's impossible to pin it down. All I know is that we both love it.

We buy our semolina in Indiatown - semolina is called "suji". Even after about 10 minutes of kneading, I decided that the bread dough would probably always be a bit grainy feeling. I added the currants and pinenuts and amazingly, as I was working the dough to distribute the currants evenly, the dough suddenly became smooth and silky!

I really couldn't be more thrilled about the bread. I have only one complaint. It takes no time for a loaf to disappear!

Thank you once again, Susan!

• Susan's recipe for Semolina Bread with Currants, Fennel, Pine Nuts
• my take on the recipe for semolina fennel seed bread with currants & pinenuts

Lately, I have been having a devil of a time judging whether the dough has risen enough. And I have been allowing it to over-rise. The over-risen dough produces flat as pancake loaves that taste good but don't look all that great. But finally, after weeks of trying, there was oven spring and the loaves are round rather than flat. Yay! I like to balance cookie cutter(s) on top of the just shaped bread to etch a design in top of the loaf. For this loaf, I used 3 star shaped cutters. (Remove the cookie cutters just before baking the bread.) I really like the way it looks! It's not quite as spectacular as the ridges that people get by proofing their bread upside down in baskets but it doesn't require nearly the nerve. One doesn't have to flip risen bread out onto a peel with this designing technique.

• Wild Yeast Bread recipe