Sourdough Bread Yeast (Wild Yeast)

For those who are serious about making bread at home, there will come a time when the bread made using a bread machine and the commercial yeast will just not cut it. If you want the rustic flavor of a sourdough bread whose history dates back thousands of years, you need to first prepare your very own wild yeast at home.

So how do we do it? It is really simple but you need time. From the beginning to the end of the process it takes about 7 - 10 days. But once this yeast is ready you can preserve it for very long times with very little maintenance.

Procedure

• Prepare a mix of 50% white and 50% whole wheat flour. You can put 100 grams from each. Put this in a jar with closed lid.
• Take about two tablespoons from this mix and put into a smaller jar. Put a small amount of water to bring to a thick batter consistency. It should not be too liquidy but not too solid either. It should look like this:

• Cover this such that it is NOT airtight. You can put a lid loosely or cover it with a cloth as in this picture:

• Put it aside in a dark cool place (not too cold) for about 3 days. You do not need to do anything during this time.
• In the fourth day, you may observe a crust at the surface. Throw the crust away and add about 2 teaspoons of flour from your 50/50 mix. Add a bit of water to keep the consistency similar to how you did the first time. This is known as a feeding. At this point some yeast have formed and it needs a bit of food to grow strong and multiply.
• The reason that we are throwing away some and adding some is we don't want our mixture to grow in size. If it grows a lot, you will have to make bigger feedings meaning more wasted flour. In the end, when we make our bread we will only need about a tablespoon from this mixture.
• In the fifth day repeat the process. Regardless of whether there is crust or not, take a few teaspoons of the mixture away and replace it with new 50/50 flour and a bit of water. Mix it every time.
• Smell your mixture every day. From the fifth day, you may start to feel the sourdough smell and start the see the bubbles on the surface. This is an indication that your yeast is growing strong. Here is an example:

• After 7 - 10 days, it should start to smell really nice and you should see more bubbles. Every time you take it out to make a feeding (once a day is sufficient), enjoy this smell. It smells kind of sweet vinegary, viny, fruity, all that kind of nice stuff.

At this point your wild yeast is ready. You can directly use it in a sourdough bread. I will share a recipe in another post. If you are not going to use it right away, you can store it in the refrigerator. In this case, you do not have to feed it everyday. A feeding of once a week could be sufficient. This is because in the cool temperatures of the refrigerator the activity of the yeast greatly slows down. But if you decide to make a feeding, do not immediately put it back in the refrigerator. Keep it in room temperature for at least a day so that the yeast can reinvigorate itself by consuming this fresh flour.

So there you go. If you try this let me know in the comments how it came out and what you think.