Kitchen Capers

[Gina]

Making wild yeast is a more healthy way to make wholesome bread at home. Once you figure out how this is made, you can bake the best artisan breads at home.

Traditional breads made with Wild yeast has a very distinctive flavour and taste. Once you start eating a bread made with Wild yeast, you will never go back to instant yeast breads.

Have fun, its not the easiest thing to do. But the rewards are priceless.

Ingredients
100g flour
100g water

Method
1. Use a clean pot with cover. Make sure its dry. First measure water with it using a digital scale


2. Then measure flour and stir till its well mixed.
3. the mixture should look very sticky as shown.


4. Cover it and leave it aside in a dry and warm place, untouched for 2 days.

5. By the next day, it should double in volume. Open the cover to see if its "ALIVE". There should be lots of bubbles popping up to the surface.
The mixture should smell sour and mouldy. Cover again.




6. Leave it alone for another day.
7. By the 2nd day, it should double from that.

From the 2nd day
1. Add 100g of water to the 1st day culture, stir till its well mixed, no lumps. The mixture should look like this..full of bubbles.



2. Now add 100g of flour and stir again till there are no lumps.




3. This is how it should look like after flour is added.



4. Leave this covered slightly. Don't press down too much, leave a small gap.

5. Repeat the process of feeding the culture for at least 7 days. On the 8th day, the wild yeast is ready for use.
to use it, use a CLEAN SPOON to scoop out what you need.

Example, most bread recipes needs 7g to 10g of instant yeast.
So with this, you take 1 tbsp of wild yeast.

If you make bread every day with the wild yeast, you have to 'feed' the yeast again.

To Feed the yeast
Add 1 cup of water, 1 cup of flour. Basically just follow the same steps above.

Notes
Basically you can use plain flour, bread flour or even Rye flour. Water must be distilled water, if not use bottled mineral distilled water.

I have tried using very sour Pineapple juice(extracted from making pineapple jam/tarts)..works wonders. yeast has a sweet pineapple flavour. And its natural.

How to store the yeast
Keep it in a airtight jar and store into the fridge.
To use, remove from the fridge at least 4 hours before use to 'wake' up the yeast.
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Gina

The Lord is my Shepherd. I have EVERYTHING I need. Psalms 23:1

[Ruyi]

Gina - I heard people talking about this before and they said they use this culture to make sour dough. I did not believe such thing can be true. Well, seeing is believing! Thanks Gina.
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[Gina]

Ruyi

I wanted to do this again as one of the KC members shared his Italian Bread recipe here. Ages ago..and in my haste to try his recipe, I forgot to add yeast!

the joke back then was he said i must have been culturing wild yeast in my kitchen.

I did that italian Bread without any yeast and it came out fluffy, soft and very good.

This is very true..Ruyi. Because our Asian Chinese roots uses this 'formula' to make the traditional mian zhong or pau zhong, without yeast. And I have done that too. Successfully..!
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Gina

The Lord is my Shepherd. I have EVERYTHING I need. Psalms 23:1

[Reirei]

Hi Gina, if we were to use this natural yeast, what is the percentage/ratio to add to flour?

How do we 'feed' it? Do we make another batch to add on to it? Or just add flour and water to fermented mixture?

Will it go bad? I mean, if we see green/black mould, can it still be used?

Thanks.
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All That Matters

[Gina]

rei

I will update this topic tomorrow. Coz i want to show the pictures of how to feed it, etc, etc.

it won't go bad as long as you use a clean spoon to scoop out what you need each time.

to feed it would mean you add 100g of flour and 100g of water again. You only need to feed it when you remove something out. not feed it when its not been used.

wait ..tomorrow i show more pictures. When you visit me on Saturday, i can give u a portion of this wild yeast to play. then I think you need to bring 2 glass jars now and a bigger bag!



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Gina

The Lord is my Shepherd. I have EVERYTHING I need. Psalms 23:1

[wombat]

i tried sour dough... 10days!!! my house stink! gosh....

[Gina]

[wombat]

yes is covered.... but then... when u get near.... oh man... faints... and is like wow...

i told my friends i have new pets every moment... lol

[Chips]

Wombat, if your sourdough culture stinks, it has gone bad. It shouldn't take 10 days to make. Throw it away and start again. Matured sourdough should smell slightly sour, slightly nutty and has a bit of alcohol smell. It shouldn't give out a bad ponk.

I have been baking with sourdough now for more than 2 years and I can say it produces amazing tasting bread. I bake mostly artisan breads.

Gina, you still need to feed the culture regularly if you do not use it, otherwise it will starve and die. I keep mine in the fridge and feed it 15:30:30 (starter in grams:water in grams:flour in grams) every 2 weeks if not making bread.

[wombat]

[Gina]

[bakingjourney]

Gina, this is so interesting and do update as I'm really curious about it. Bet my mother will kill me if I try to culture wild yeast at home, imagine the smell. Hee
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Bernice

[Chips]

[Chips]

Gina,

I think the infor that you can leave the culture at room temperature comes from bakeries. They use the culture every day, hence they feed it everyday, take out what they need to bake and then feed it again and it goes on.

For us home bakers, since we don't bake every day we need to slow down this process by keeping the culture in the fridge where it "sleeps" and so do not consume so much food. Flours these days very expensive

When you make bread you feed it and keep some for storage culture. If you don't make bread for a while then, you refresh your culture by removing some of it and feeding it for storage. The rest you can either discard or if you are like me who does not like to waste food, use it to make sourdough pancakes.

[Gina]

[bakingjourney]

Goodness, I feel like a mountain tortoise to think that they stink.
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Bernice

[Chips]

Gina,

You are very lucky to learn tips from commercial bakers. We have to learn from each other and trial and error.

I am watching your sourdough journey with interest and happy this ancient method of making bread is making a revival.

Last Feb, I taught my Mom to bake with sourdough. She remembers this was how bread or rather pau was made when she was growing up in China. Isn't it interesting that ancient civilizations in different parts of the world know how to make bread with natural yeast? The methods may differ slightly but the principle behind it remains the same.

[Gina]

[Gina]

wahhh...! maid spill the jar! now all spoiled
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Gina

The Lord is my Shepherd. I have EVERYTHING I need. Psalms 23:1

[kwf]

Again? Oh no! You should ask her to do it the next round.
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My baking & knitting journey

[Chips]

[nora]

[Halimah]

sorry to hear that :(

well at least it will be quite easy to make it again... take care...
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[Gina]

[Chips]

That's the spirit, Gina. Better luck this time.