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Survival Food Series: 3 Ways To Naturally Make Yeast

Tess Pennington
Ready Nutrition
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Where would we be
non-existent, and
ts would cease to
asts are made for
tilling spirits.

without the discovery of yeast? Fresh, puffy bread would be


need I not mention the fact that beer, wine and alcohol produc
exist. Of course, all yeasts were not created equal. Some ye
making bread and baked goods, and some yeasts are made for dis

Knowing ways of making this essential prep would be beneficial to anyone trying
to live off of the food supply they have. Grains, vegetables and fruits are thr
ee of the easiest ways to find yeast. Some have even used herbs to get their ye
ast.
How Does It Work?
Did you know that yeast is actually alive on plants? As long as it has warmth,
moisture, and food to grow, it will stay alive. Fruits, vegetables, herbs, and
all edible sources have yeast living on it s surface. As a result, using differen
t produce will add to the flavor of the bread you make. Simply by soaking the p
roduce in water, you can separate the yeast and use the water it is floating in.
The water and yeast actually start the fermentation process that when mixed wi
th flours creates that desirable baked good we love so much. This fermented con
coction is also called a bread starter by some.
By using this method, however much water the recipe calls for is how much water
to soak the fruit, vegetable, herb or grain in. Those that have used this metho
d rave about raisins as being one of the best fruits to use for acquiring yeast.
Grains
In the book, The Little House Cookbook, Ma Ingalls explains how she ferments her
bread dough using what she has on hand, You start it by putting some flour and wa
rm water in a jar and letting it stand till it sours Then you use it, always a litt
le. And put in the scraps of biscuit dough and add warm water, and cover it and j
ust set it in a warm place.
Because yeast is already present on grains, when combined with water, the yeast
will separate from the grain. As a result of the soaking process, the combinati
on will begin to ferment.
To create this starter you will need:

1 1/4 unbleached all-purpose white flour


1 cup of warm water
Glass jar with lid or piece of cheesecloth
Mix flour and water in the jar and let stand until the batter bubbles and rises.
This may take anywhere from overnight to a week!
Here is another method you could use
Potatoes
Wild yeast naturally lives on potatoes as well, making this a popular choice for
making alcohols, such as vodka. According to the article, Homemade Yeast: Making
and Using Yeast For Bread, the author states that using potatoes to make yeast s
tarters dates back to 4,000 B.C.!
Yeast Starter 1
one medium potato, unpeeled
4 cups water
1 tsp. sugar
Boil potato in the unsalted water until done. Drain, but save the water.
Mash potato then add sugar and salt.
Cool to lukewarm, add enough potato water to make one quart of mixture.
Cover and set in a warm place and allow to ferment. Note: If the starter is not
rising, you can add a package of store bought yeast to speed up the process (but
it will be just as good if allowed to ferment without the added yeast). This re
cipe is about right for a large family requiring more than one loaf for baking.
Yeast Starter 2
one potato, unpeeled (about the size of a large hen egg)
3/4 cup potato water
2 Tbsp. sugar
flour
Boil potato, drain and save potato water (unsalted).
Mash potato well, and then add potato water, sugar and enough flour to make a fa
irly stiff batter or soft dough.
Keep in a warm place until fermenting process is complete.
Put mixture in a wide mouth jar and cover loosely never use a tight fitting lid. I
n about five or six days it should be ready.
*Bonus* Here s a quick and easy way to make a potato starter
Fruit Yeasts
Many fruits can be used to make yeast for bread. Oranges, apples, grapefruits,
grapes and even dried raisins all have traces of yeast on them. Using yeasts fr
om fruits will create different flavors to the breads that you make. Skins of f
ruit can be used as well as cores of apples and even tomatoes. The only fruits
that should be avoided are kiwi, pineapple and papaya. These fruits contain act
inidin, an enzyme that breaks the dough down and it creates a sticky mess.
Fruit Yeast Starter
3-4 tbls. raisins (or any fresh or dried fruit)
bottled water
clean jar
Place raisins in clean jar and pour bottled water into the jar until it is 80% f
ull.
Loosely cover the jar and leave at room temperature. This process should take a
few days. You will notice small bubbles and activity occurring inside the jar.
At this point, all the raisins should be floating at the top. The jar should sm

ell like wine. Once it is done, store in the refrigerator.


*Tip: Adding 1-2 tablespoons of honey or sugar to your mixture speeds up the fer
menting process and leads to a better result.
Source
Without yeast, our lives would be void of many of our day-to-day products. Gett
ing back to the basics and learning how to make yeast yourself will give you an
invaluable skill to hold onto and share with others. Using different produce su
ch as oranges, potatoes, herbs and grains is not only a great science experiment
, but a way for you to play around with the flavors of your favorite bread recip
es.
==========
How To Make a Wild Yeast Starter Mattie
Written by Mattie
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How To Make a Wild Yeast Starter
Having a wild yeast starter (also known as a sourdough starter)
on can lead to a whole new wold of fascinating flavors and food
rything from breads, pancakes, quick breads to pizza crusts can
d yeasted dough, which has no need for commercial bread yeasts.
our magic little dough friend that's actually alive, waiting to
nhance whatever you introduce it to.

in your possessi
experiences. Eve
be made with wil
Think of it as y
morph into and e

Find Wild-yeasted recipes on Veganbaking.net


A Little Sourdough History
Back in the good old days, from at least as early as Egyptian times to the late
1800's, all bread was wild yeasted. The term wild yeasted is interchangeable wit
h sourdough. It's meant to describe a mixture of flour and water that has been s
et aside to accumulate naturally occurring yeasts and bacterias to allow the bre
ad ferment, which causes it to rise, or leaven. When people made bread in early
times they used a little of the dough from the last batch to start fermenting th
e dough of the next batch.
Using yeast to rise bread has been depicted in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. Som
eone probably left a water and flour mixture out a little too long and it gave t
he bread a more fluffy texture with more flavor complexity. We have been spendin
g at least the last 5000 years still trying to perfect our breads. In early time
s no one knew how or why bread was leavened. It wasn't until the 17th century th
at the microscope was invented and we could finally see what was happening on th
e cellular level. In the mid 1800's there was fierce debate on the cause of leav
ening, some claiming that it was due to a breakdown of cells, others claiming it
was due to living organisms.
It wasn't until 1857 that Louis Pasteur solved the mystery by determining that t
he white powder on grape skins called bloom was actually yeast spores that cause
d wine to ferment. This proved that fermentation was caused by a living organism
. After all these years we finally knew what caused our bread to rise and everyo
ne let out a collective eeeeww . This sparked fear into the minds of many people an
d a movement was started to move away from sour breads because they were likened
to decaying matter.
Bread bakers then began making breads from leftover yeast from beer brewing. To
this day, bread yeast is the same as beer yeast. Bread yeast is actually called
Saccharomyces cervisiae. Cervisiae translates to of beer in latin. But all of this
yeast making was starting to get tiring. What if there was an easier way to jus

t make the yeast?


In the late 1800's Austrian chemists figured out how to make what we know today
as commercial bread yeast. This changed everything because now you could just ad
d yeast to bread as an easily measurable ingredient. The advantages to this is t
hat many aspects of bread such as flavor, rise and lightness could be easily con
trolled and calculated, leading to more consistent bread that was easier and che
aper to make. This also ushered in what I call the dark ages of bread . Wild yeaste
d bread began to be shunned by the higher class because bread made from commerci
al yeast had a less complex, cleaner flavor and was thus associated with higher
quality. This led to a downturn in the production of wild yeasted breads much in
the same way that whole wheat breads were originally more popular amongst the l
ower classes.

Wild Yeast Explained


Why does wild yeasted bread have such a complex flavor compared to bread leavene
d with commercial yeast? I thought you'd never ask! When flour and water are lef
t out for several days, naturally occurring yeast in the air and the flour, usua
lly saccharomyces exiguus and bacteria, mostly lactobacillus and acetobacillus f
eed off the sugars released by the enzymes in the dough. Lactobacillus and aceto
bacillus create the sour flavor in the form of lactic and acetic acids. Around t
he San Francisco Bay Area, a naturally occurring bacteria called lacobacillus sa
n francisco is responsible for the sourdough flavor. This is due to the terroir,
or environmental factors that allow the bacteria to thrive in San Francisco's l
ocal climate. It is said that the wild yeast strain for San Francisco's climate
(saccharomyces exiguus) thrives in very acidic environments where normal bakers
yeast (saccharomyces cervisiae) would not be able to sustain itself. This is due
to lactobacillus san francisco's affinity for maltose which wouldn't exist in a
dough populated with Saccharomyces cervisiae.
It used to be thought that these particular strains of microbes were only presen
t in the San Francisco Bay Area which enabled the idea that San Francisco sourdo
ugh could only be produced in that region. Recently this theory has been debunke
d and now it's common knowledge that these, and other microbes are more commonly
present and affect sourdoughs throughout many different regions of the world. W
hat we know about wild yeasted breads is probably just merely scratching the sur
face because there are probably hundreds or thousands of flavor compounds genera
ted during the wild fermentation of dough.
Now let's make our wild yeast starter shall we?
Starter Explained
Note that a 100% sourdough bread will not be as light and airy as a bread made w
ith commercial yeasts. This is because we're leavening our bread with wild airbo
rne yeasts that aren't specifically engineered for bread baking like commercial
bread yeasts are. Some bakers add a small amount of commercial yeast to their st
arter to give their sourdough breads an extra boost (blasphemy! This is called s
piking) but I recommend allowing nature to be the bread's guide. The flavor of a
100% wild yeasted bead is worth it.
There are several ways to make a wild yeast starter, varying in complexity, that
all have the same simple goal: to allow natural airborne yeasts and bacterias t
o infiltrate your starter mixture, call it home and generate several complex fla
vor compounds in beautiful loving harmony. In order for this to happen the right
yeasts and bacterias need to populate your starter. The wrong bacterias will ma
ke your starter smell rotten and putrid. In this case your starter becomes a hea
lth hazard and needs to live out the rest of it's rebellious life in the garbage

. In a wild yeast starter the natural airborne yeast and bacterias get to the po
int of where they populate the starter so they have the upper hand and no other
harmful yeasts or bacterias can establish themselves. This usually takes about 7
or 8 days depending on several environmental factors. The longer your starter i
s going into the 7 or 8 day process of becoming populated, the more resistant it
is to contamination. Note that this behavior is similar to other fermented food
s such as beer, kraut, etc.
In an effort to reliably make wild yeast starters, many various methods have bee
n devised; some that are as complex as making bread itself. These methods includ
e adding berries or plums to the starter (the white powdery substance on the top
of blueberries and plums is yeast bloom which supposedly helps starters get goi
ng), adding sultanas (which also supposedly have beneficial yeasts or sugars), a
dding juices, adding milk, adding small amounts of baker's yeast and even replac
ing large amounts of starter on a daily basis.
Wild yeast starter method variations don't significantly affect the final outcom
e of your bread texture-wise and flavor-wise so it's a good idea to just keep it
simple. I've found that as long as you relax, let the yeast and bacterias do th
e work and attend to your starter as described below, you'll have no need for co
mplex, confusing starter regimens. This will allow you to focus more on the baki
ng aspect of your bread so it turns out as awesome as it can be.
Keep in mind that wild yeast starters don't have a 100% success rate. Sometimes
you'll do everything right and it will get infected with foreign bacteria or it
will never get started by the yeast. Remember, we're doing a wild fermentation s
o we're dependent on what nature gives us.
This is a very easy sourdough starter method that should provide reliable, consi
stent results. You can use any type flour for a sourdough starter but many baker
s report that the best flavor comes from whole wheat flour, rye flour or a combi
nation of the two.
Making Your Starter
Making wild yeast starter
cup bread flour, whole wheat flour, all-purpose flour or rye flour
cup + 2 Tablespoons water
Place flour and water in a very clean large bowl or jar and stir until well inco
rporated. It's important to use glass or stainless steel bowls. non-stainless st
eel bowls can react with the lactic and acetic acids present in the mixture. Pla
stic bowls can also produce off flavors due to foods that have been stored in th
em in the past. Cover the bowl with a cheesecloth secured by a rubber band. In t
he morning, mix in about 2 Tablespoons flour and 2 Tablespoons water. In the eve
ning give the mixture another stir. Organic flour is preferred because it has th
e least amount of pesticide residue, which may affect the ability of your starte
r to get going. If your water is heavily treated, use filtered or bottled water
to help promote maximum yeast and bacteria activity. In between stirrings it's n
ormal for the mixture to separate and for a small layer of water to be on the to
p.
The mixture should start to show bubbles within about 4 to 7 days depending on t
emperature, humidity and other environmental factors. During these first several
days, the starter may inhabit certain yeasts and/or bacterias that are not pref
erred. They should only be there for a couple days, as the rising of the yeasts
and bacterias that we want will overpower them and they will diminish. After the
starter shows bubbles for an additional 2 to 3 days it will have generated enou
gh yeast to make it suitable for using. Feel free to taste your mixture after mi
xing each day to get a feel for how it's doing. If the mixture begins to smell p

utrid you can attempt to 'rescue' your starter. Do this by discarding 1 cup of t
he starter and mixing in 1 cup of fresh flour and 1 cup of water, then proceed w
ith the normal feeding schedule.
Using Your Starter
Once the mixture gets to this state it's important to use some of it within a fe
w days and replenish it with the amount of water equal to what you removed, plus
an equal amount of flour. For example, if you removed 1 cup of the mixture, add
1 cup of water, 1 cup of flour and mix until smooth.
Maintaining Your Starter
In wild yeast starter the acids build up twice
y doesn't turn into an issue because the yeast
if you regularly feed the starter. The Boudin
osedly been going for over a hundred years. If
d it will start to smell and taste putrid.

as fast as the yeast. This usuall


and bacterias regulate themselves
Bakery sourdough starter has supp
the yeast starter runs out of foo

If you bake bread about once a month or so, you also have the option of storing
your starter covered with an air tight lid in the refrigerator. The benefit of t
his is that to maintain your starter you only need to remove it from the refrige
rator once per week, feed it by stirring in 3 Tablespoons of flour and 3 Tablesp
oons water and allow it to wake up for about 4 hours before either using it or p
lacing it back into the refrigerator again. If you use your starter to bake brea
d remember to replenish the 1 cup you removed with 1 cup of flour and 1 cup of w
ater.
Summary of Making a Sourdough Starter and Sponge
Make your starter
Day 1
Mix 1 cup water and 1 cup flour. Cover with cheesecloth.
Day 2
Add 2 Tablespoons flour and 2 Tablespoons water stirring
cheesecloth.
Day 3
Add 2 Tablespoons flour and 2 Tablespoons water stirring
cheesecloth.
Day 4
Add 2 Tablespoons flour and 2 Tablespoons water stirring
cheesecloth.
Day 5
Add 2 Tablespoons flour and 2 Tablespoons water stirring
cheesecloth.
Day 6
Add 2 Tablespoons flour and 2 Tablespoons water stirring
cheesecloth.
Day 7
Add 2 Tablespoons flour and 2 Tablespoons water stirring
cheesecloth.
Day 8
Proceed to making your sponge.
Make your sponge

twice daily. Cover with


twice daily. Cover with
twice daily. Cover with
twice daily. Cover with
twice daily. Cover with
twice daily. Cover with

Now you will use the starter to make your sponge.


1 cup sourdough starter
1 cup water
1 cup whole wheat flour, bread flour or all-purpose flour
Mix together starter, water and flour. Allow it to sit from 4 to 12 hours until

it increases in size between 50% and 100%. Alternatively, you can place the spon
ge in the refrigerator overnight which will generate a more flavorful loaf. In t
his case, the sponge will need to be removed in the morning so it will be able t
o double from it's original size. The level of rise be checked by using a kitche
n utensil such as a knife as a dipstick, dipping into the mixture once at the be
ginning and taking subsequent measurements until the dough has gotten to it's pr
oper size. I already posted this picture above but this measuring method is show
n below.
Measure the rise of the sponge
The point to making a sponge is to give your starter a large amount of food so i
t gets a running start before it ends up in your final dough. This will allow yo
ur final dough to leaven as effectively as possible. After your starter has reac
hed sufficient size It is now ready to use in your bread recipe's final dough.
Stay tuned for recipes that make use of wild yeast starter.

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