On Mastodon, I’ve been posting about baking bread and growing yeast. The problem is that in these times of Corona, I immediately thought: “I’m going to bake me some bread so I don’t have to go by my daily bread!” Sadly, many other people seem to have had the same idea and where as I was always able to find some flour and get it home-delivered, getting yeast was tricky. So, I determined to grow my own yeast.
Online, I found this article: How To Easily Make Your Own Yeast From Scratch. I cooked some potatoes the other night. Kept a bit of the water, added a spoon of sugar, added a lot of flour, covered it up, and left it in a warm room (our bathroom) for the night.
How To Easily Make Your Own Yeast From Scratch
The potato water is probably useless though, since it’s boiled. Doh.
Not much happened. Also, I read that you need a big jar!
Having some extra potato water after Raclette I added more flour and water (50g each); then I noticed some bubbles and added some more (another 50g each). And now I think it grew half a jar in a day.
YEAST TAKEOVER IMMINENT!
Then I made some bread. I added a bit of salt, and a lot of flour and water to make a wet dough, kneaded it for 10 minutes and let it rise for 2h (but it didn’t), put it in the fridge overnight, took it out the next morning, kneaded it for a bit, let it rise again for 2h (but it didn’t), and finally decided to just make flat bread. I added some water to the oven which I heated up to 230°C. The water provided steam for the first 10min or so.
The next time I will use precise measurements, I swear. I seem to have gotten the nuclear option for yeast…
I guess I should have made some cuts at the top. Or left it to prove (raise) for a lot longer.
Anyway, I tried it. It was delicious. I declare success!
This was a nice YouTube video to watch, recommended by @dredmorbius: How To Make Sourdough Bread Masterclass. Also in this post, Sourdough Bread Masterclass With Patrick Ryan.
How To Make Sourdough Bread Masterclass
Sourdough Bread Masterclass With Patrick Ryan
A related thing: making Zopf, a tasty bread that’s a traditional weekend breakfast bread here in Switzerland.
And here’s another YouTube video that is about making sourdough pancakes with the starter if you’re not baking bread every day (and not keeping your starter in the fridge).
And here’s me making bread half a year later.
#Bread #Cooking
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Image 4 I cannot see with elpher, anyway I think you should optimize your images for screen, none of them need be 1 MB and more. We were in Uganda during lockdown by Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, later I came back to Kampala, we are continually making bread without yeast, we do use baking powder and bread is often fluffy, depending what we put inside, but does not raise much, still is very eatable, yours look great so far, and you have cheese. That is why I complain, there is no Swiss cheese in Uganda, it is terrible situation, if I would just have cheese during the lockdown time, I would me much happier than only swimming with pygmies and chasing elephants in the night. – Jean Louis
2020-10-18 17:09 UTC
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You are absolutely right! The problem was that the image was a 2MB PNG image instead of a 200kB JPG image. That should now be fixed. Thanks for letting me know.
Where do you get your baking powder from? The part I thought was fascinating about the sourdough was that the years is all over in the environment so you can basically start with nothing: just the flour and water, and a few days of patience, and eventually you’ll get a sourdough.
I agree, cheese makes many things better! 😀
– Alex 2020-10-18 17:32 UTC
