How to capture wild yeast for bread (and WHY it works)

Comments · 1.9K

• AR

  @aragusea · 6 years ago · pinned

  Q: What if I don&apos;t like sourdough? Can I use a method like this to make dough that isn&apos;t sour?<br>A: Not really, no. That&apos;s why yeast harvested from breweries (and later dried commercial yeast) was such a big advancement for baking. It allowed the development of yeast-risen &quot;sweet&quot; breads — sweet meaning not sour, in this context. (You can actually make fantastic desserts with sourdough.) If you&apos;re having trouble finding commercial yeast but you want to make yeast bread that isn&apos;t sourdough, there are some other options. I&apos;ve heard it&apos;s possible to grow some yeast from an unfiltered beer. Never tried that, but sounds interesting! You can also get a small amount of commercial dried yeast reproducing in a little wet dough (or other mixture of carbs and water) and keep it going in the fridge for some duration of time. I&apos;ve heard of people doing that, but I imagine that it would eventually become a sourdough starter, since bacteria are gonna get going in there eventually. That last part is a guess.<br><br>Q: Can I cook with the starter I discard every day?<br>A: Absolutely, there are lots of &quot;discard&quot; recipes on the internet. It&apos;s popular to make pancakes with it. However, be aware that in that first 1-2 weeks when you&apos;re getting your starter going, your discard might taste and smell terrible, and it might not have much rising power. In a mature starter, the acid-producing bacteria have &quot;defeated&quot; all the other bacteria and undesirable fungi. (Yeast are acid tolerant, that&apos;s why they work so well with these bacteria.) If I had cooked that nasty pink 3-day-old starter I showed you in the vid, it probably would have tasted like foot rot, because it was filled with undesirable microbes.<br><br>Q: Does it really have to be unchlorinated water? Does it have to be unbleached flour? Does it have to be X, Y, Z? <br>A: As I said in the vid, we don&apos;t really know. People have successfully made starters with just about anything, but we don&apos;t know what works best, or even what you might define as &quot;best.&quot; The folks at NC State recommend unchlorinated simply because it&apos;s so easy to obtain, but it might not even be necessary. (Be aware that some cities use chloramine to sterilize their water, and that won&apos;t just go &quot;poof&quot; if you leave your water out for a day, like chlorine will.) Regarding bleached flour, people have absolutely made good starters with bleached flour. Maybe the bleaching process kills some of the beneficial microbes in the flour that help get your starter going? This is one of the question the folks at the Dunn Lab are trying to answer with their current citizen science project. Remember, if you gather some data for them, I&apos;ll thank you in a vid: <a href="http://robdunnlab.com/projects/wildsourdough/">http://robdunnlab.com/projects/wildsourdough/</a><br><br>Q: Didn&apos;t you say in this old video that you think sourdough starters are too much work? <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4ABOKdHEUs">https://youtu.be/o4ABOKdHEUs</a><br>A: Yes. You can make a sourdough-like product by simply making a dough with commercial yeast and letting it sit in the fridge for a week. I&apos;m a fan of that. And it may literally be sourdough. I&apos;m not sure, but the folks at the Dunn Lab have some ideas about how we might use science to determine exactly what&apos;s going on in my old fridge dough. Stay tuned. But yes, a sourdough starter is too much work for me. As I said in the vid, the only reason I&apos;m interested it now is because of the COVID yeast shortage. Also I try to make videos about things that might be interesting to you, even if they&apos;re not terribly interesting to me.

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• OM

  @omegamatsu · 6 years ago

  From the yeast&apos;s POV theres a Thanos snap every 24hrs

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• MI

  @michaelkpp7285 · 6 years ago

  &quot;Why I feed my starters not my children&quot;<br><br><br><br><br><br><i>please come home</i>

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• CH

  @christosbelibasakis2296 · 6 years ago

  Why I capture wild yeast and not domesticated yeast

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• SH

  @shaquilleoneal117 · 6 years ago

  I though that capturing wild yeast was digging in my backyard and grinding a rock into a powder or something.

  121

• TR

  @trusarmor4957 · 6 years ago

  my Dad and i used to rise before the Spring Sun and Hunt the Wild Yeast across the warm rain swept Plains of Brooklyn.

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• RO

  @roberthoople · 6 years ago

  I am now calling bread: &quot;Structured Microbe Fart Loaf&quot;

  34

• CH

  @Chris_seh · 6 years ago

  Lets get this bread: No<br>Lets MAKE this bread: YES

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• NE

  @NewMateo · 9 months ago

  It&apos;s wild knowing that households around the world keep a pet jar of bread slime just...tucked away...sometimes living for multiple generations.

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• NI

  @nicholejones95 · 6 years ago

  &quot;I&apos;m calling my starter Gary.&quot;

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• LI

  @lilyrowlett5624 · 2 years ago

  For anyone that finds this, discard tortillas are amazing. Take discard add a bit of oil (1 tablespoon per 1/2c starter) then add enough flour to make a dough. Let rest 10 minutes. Roll out and cook on flat top until middle of bubbles turn brown then flip .<br>I make these every morning. Love the discard more than the actual sourdough bread.

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• CH

  @churchgest · 6 years ago

  These scientist look like they are having a bunch of fun

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