Atomic Shrimp - Capturing And Taming Wild Yeast

Capturing And Taming Wild Yeast

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Why Bother?

In these days of convenient freeze-dried instant packet yeast, why go to all this bother?

It's a good question - In fact, Why bother making your own bread at all? - why not just buy it?

It's certainly not about saving money - although it is generally a bit cheaper to bake your own.

There are quite a few reasons, really, including:

It's just an interesting idea

I mean, you're bothering to read this, aren't you? See? It's at least slightly interesting.

It's a way of connecting with the past

this is how it used to be done - well, something like this - and the bread I end up making this way will hopefully be something like the bread of yesteryear. So, like visiting a museum or reading a history book, this is a way of connecting with the past.

It's a little bit like magic

You start with just flour and water and end up with bread - actual, real bread - that's almost too amazing to believe.

But it's also science

it's an experiment. It might fail. it might succeed - anything could happen, but I will learn something.

And you can't buy stuff like this anyway

my captured yeast might not be a strain that is in common use by commercial bakers. This might be a good or bad thing - but it will certainly be mine.

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I decided to have a go at capturing and taming some wild yeast for breadmaking.

I started with a clean glass jar and three tablespoons of flour - two white and one wholemeal (the wholemeal is from the working medieval watermill at the Weald & Downland Open Air Museum - Hoping that this would have enjoyed just a little more exposure to interesting wild yeasts than the industrial plain white flour I have in the cupboard.

I mixed the flour with about the same volume of boiled (cooled) water - stirred it up and covered with a piece of gauze.

Now I have to wait until something happens - something bubbly... I'll update this article as things develop (or otherwise).

Day 3 and it's starting to bubble...

Day 4: more bubbling and a layer of clearish liquid on the top. Smells sort of tangy.

Refreshing

Time to refresh the mixture - I tipped off the clear liquid, reserved a spoonful of the mix and washed out the jar very thoroughly.

Then I made a new mix - just plain flour and cooled boiled water this time, stirred the reserved bubbly mix in and covered it up again. More waiting now...

Day 5: Quite bubbly now - and it smells a bit like beer - I'm taking that as a good sign. I refreshed the mixture again with a new batch of white flour, water and two spoonfuls of the existing mix

Day 6: Wow! Very bubbly and active (see below). Smells pleasantly yeasty - looks like I can declare this part of the project a success!

OK... now what?

I've never actually made bread with a live yeast culture before - so it looks like I've got a little research to do before proceeding...

Onward!

What I'm doing next is to make up a small ball of dough, using flour, water and my starter paste

The dough is going in a floured container overnight - in the morning, I'll probably transfer it to the fridge. Portions of the dough can then be used to start 'sponge' batters, or used directly to start dough (with a longer proving time). One portion of the dough will always be kept back and refreshed to keep the culture going.

Making the bread

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