Starting Wild Yeast Cultures
Wild yeast is the naturally existing yeast found on grains, fruit, and vegetation outside in the air or just blowing around inside your kitchen. Wild yeast typically clings to surfaces of vineyards, wineries, buries bakeries as well as on wild fruits. Any combination of wild yeasts species and domesticated ones can end up in your starter and which species of wild yeast floating around your area may be different from other locations.
Louis Pasteur determined that the white powder on grape skins, called bloom, was actually yeast spores back in 1850s. The airborne microflora, like yeast, are especially attracted to the sweet skin of berries and grapes were they appear as a whitish powder. When the membrane of the ripened fruit is injured, the yeast slip in and begin to ferment the juice's sugars. Starting a yeast culture from the spores found living vegetables, fruits and grains can be used to obtain a stronger, purer, yeast culture for a variety of uses than just exposure to the air.
Many fruits can be used to make yeast for bread: oranges, apples, peaches, grapefruits, juniper berry, Oregon grape, tomatoes, grapes and even dried raisins all have traces of yeast on them. Using yeasts from the skins of different fruits will create different flavors to the breads that you make. Cretin fruits, however, should not be used such as kiwi, pineapple and papaya as they contain an enzyme that breaks the dough down into a sticky mess. Raw fruits, even dried fruits, that are unsulfured, all have traces of yeast on them.
Interestingly, quaking aspen and paper birch are reported to grow yeast on their sunny sided bark that is visible as a light colored powder. The gray or white power can be scraped from the bark placed into a flour/water mixture to produce wild yeast culture starter for making bread. I have no experience with this method though.
When you capture wild yeast, you will also capture bacteria, primarily lactobacillus and acetobacillus, which also feed off the sugars released from starches by the enzymes released into the dough. This creates the sour flavor, in the form of lactic and acetic acids, found in sourdough.
Grain Starter
This starter was used for many centuries because yeast is present on grains, primarily wheat, barley and rye. The wild yeast is stronger on newly ground, freshly harvested grain.
1 1/4 cup unbleached, flour
1 cup warm water
• Mix the flour and water then pour it into the jar.
• Cover and let stand in a warm place until it starts to bubble and rise.
• Depending on the temperature and humidity, this may take anywhere from 1-7 days.
• Take out a cup of starter for each loaf of bread, and then add back in equal amounts of water and flour to the remaining starter.
Grape (Fruit) Starter
Grapes are a great fruit to use to make yeast but you can use just about any fruit or peels to do it as long as it’s unwashed additionally unpasteurized juice can be used.
3 to 4 cups grapes
2 cups unbleached, flour
1 cup water
• Crush the grapes (or other fruit) and put the juice, pulp, and peels in a jar and cover with cheesecloth.
• Put it in a warm place and leave it alone for 3 days or until you see the bubbles start to form indicating that the yeast is growing.
• On the 4th or 5th day, strain the mixture and discard the peels and pulp.
• Stir 1 cup of flour into the juice and let the starter set for 24 hours.
• To out one cup of fermenting juice, add another cup of flour and a cup of water and let sit in a warm place for a couple of days until you should have a bubbly starter.
Raisin (Dried Fruit) Yeast Starter
3 to 4 tbls. raisins or other dried fruit
water
• Place raisins in clean jar and pour bottled water into the jar until it is 80% full.
• Loosely cover the jar with cheese cloth, leave at room temperature for a few days until small bubbles appear, all the raisins are floating at the top and it smells like wine.
• On the 4th or 5th day, strain the mixture and discarding the fruit.
• Stir 1 cup of flour into the juice and let the starter set for 24 hours.
• To out one cup of fermenting juice, add another cup of flour and a cup of water and let sit in a warm place for a couple of days and repeat until you should have a bubbly starter.
Wild Yeast Starter with Potatoes and Hops
1 cup mashed, boiled potatoes
1 cup potato water
5 to 7 cups flour
1 cup dried hops
2 Tbsp. sugar
4 cups corn meal
• Boil 3 or 4 peeled potatoes in unsalted water then drain the potatoes, mash them well, saving the potato water to use later.
• Cover the hop blossoms with water, bring to a boil then drain off the water.
• Slowly stir in the potato water into the flour until it is a thick paste-like dough.
• Add mashed potatoes and sugar, mix well and then slowly add the hop water until you have a very thick mixture.
• Cover and put it in a warm place for 3 days or longer to catch the wild yeast.
• When you see the bubbles start to form, it indicates that the yeast is growing.
• Next, stir 1 cup of flour and warm water into the starter and let the starter set for 24 hours
• Repeat with an additional 1 cup of flour and warm water stirred into the starter and let set for 24 hours for up to 7 days.
• During this time the yeast creates enzymes that convert the potato and grain starches into sugar. The yeast and lactobacilli bacteria in the culture produce alcohol and lactic acid that poison and retard other unwanted bacteria so that the desired culture grows stronger.
• Finally, add enough flour to the starter to form a very soft dough.
• Let the dough rise until it double in size then punch it down and work in enough corn meal to make a stiff dough.
• Roll out the dough on a board to about 1/2 inch thick and cut into cakes.
• Let the cakes dry, turning them often to make sure they dry evenly.
• When they are very dry, store them in fruit jars.
The Roll of Starch
In a sourdough starter, the bacteria and wild yeasts feed on the starch after converting it to sugar from grains or potatoes which are very high in starch. Potatoes are one of only a few vegetables which have enough starch to work in a bread starter. However, potatoes must be boiled to release the starch from the starch bundles allowing the yeast to convert it.
The Roll of Hops
The cone-shaped female blossoms of the hops contain yellowish oil (lupulin) which encourages the growth of the yeast and acts as preservative in yeast cakes.
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