Can i create wild yeast from other produce?
Hi everyone! ?
First time poster, long time lurker. I gotta say, finding this place was like finding the holy Grail. So much knowledge and information! I can only hope to become half as good as other home bakers here.
Anyways! Let me elaborate - up until now i created yeasted water using raisins for two reasons:
first- it tastes a lot better than using commercial yeast.
Second- I'm lazy and can't be bothered to maintain an active sourdough starter ?
My question is, can i use other produce than raisins or fruits in general when creating yeasted water? Say, beets, basil etc? If so, what should be the ratio between it and the water? Should i add sugar as we'll?
Thanks in advance for any replies, and if i didn't provide enough information please say so and I'll be happy to correct myself.
Yes, one can start YW from an almost infinite variety of more and less biological sources. Tea is popular. Beets would be interesting. The most active one I ever made came from crabapples I rescued from branches I had pruned off our trees one year. Yeast are everywhere. You could probably get an active culture started by soaking your socks. Just don’t tell the recipients of the resulting bread.
Tom
yeast water made from Seth Curry's jock strap on E-bay. Talk about Toady!
crabapples are great - youre basically looking for something that yeast enjoys multiplying on so anything organic - not so dissimilar from ourselves...
Junko Mine would be a good person to ask. She has lots of experience making yeast waters and beautiful breads from all sorts of things. Here is her blog:
http://www.junkomine.com/blog-/2015/3/18/spring-celebration-2
You can find her contact under the biography tab.
Best wishes,
dw
that requires no maintenance for half a year. No one is more lazy than me and my apprentice and that is why Lucy invented it.
Just type No Muss No Fuss onto the search box on this site. YW will never give you a sourdough bread but is great for any bread where sour is not wanted or needed.
"...it is entirely possible to "build" an entirely new culture within 3 days, provided one has some time available. Recipes for this purpose are often quite amusing, including cultures based on grape juice, potatoes, raisins, yogurt, honey, and so on."
the first time i read online how to make your own sourdough, i read that the white powdery stuff on cabbage leaves is yeast. in fact, the first starter i tried i started with cabbage leaves. alas, the purple from the leaves colored the starter, but that's probably no big deal.
My yeast water is made from raspberries and is called Rosie because she is a gorgeous raspberry red in colour and smells lovely. My dough is often pink and usually that doesn’t come through after baking altho sometimes I get a slightly pink loaf ?
Leslie
do you have any pics?
Root veggies can be problematic unless they are blanched, so suggest starting out with say raisins or apple then move to feeding blanched beet root. That might be one way to go about it, convert an already existing yeast water with potatoes and other starchy roots...carrots, Jerusalem artichokes, etc.
The reason is...in dirt there lurks fungi that can take over a perfectly baked loaf and turn it into sticky goo in about three to four days. By that time one has pretty much infested the kitchen. I've run into "rope" fungus after several years of using raw potatoes, peeled and shredded into dough. Sure did love that look and effect but one day... I wasn't so lucky and contaminated my bread dough, with rope from somewhere (most likely a root or dirty grain) and had to do a total deep cleaning of the kitchen including everything, everything! So better to simply avoid that untimely fuss and boil or blanch the roots before getting them near the bread area and ingredients.
Just about anything you can make wine out of will make yeast water. Dandelions, petunias, marigold, grasses, berries and other edibles some combined with sugar. Most overripe fruit is half way there.
I find that maintaining yeast water is more work than a refrigerated rye starter. Just my opinion.
You can feed lots of fermented things with water and flour and get a starter. And that happens even faster than with just flour and water.
I made starters from accidentally fermented homemade jam, store-bought kefir, and the cloudy dregs from a beer bottle. They all were so active after a few feedings that I could bake bread with them.
I still maintain the kefir and the trüb starter, besides my regular whole wheat and rye starters, and bake with them often.
The funny thing is, that even after several years, when freshly fed, these starters smell like what they were originally made from: milk and beer!
Karin