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For a long time, I had been confused about the subject of yeast, and especially about homemade yeast. The only yeast I knew about was the little packet of active dry yeast or rapid rise yeast thatI would get at the store and sprinkle into my dough. But then Istarted collecting 19th centurycookbooks and found recipes that called for “one gill of fresh yeast” among the other ingredients.
Once I finally figured out what a gill was, though, (about a half a cup,)I was even more confused. I would have to usehow manylittle instant yeast packets to equal a whole half acup?!
After doing some moreresearch on period cooking, though, I found several recipes for how to make homemade yeast that helped to solve the mystery a bit. Most involve the use of hops orpotatoes added toboiling water and flour.The problem with all of those recipes, though, is thatthey all call for adding “a bit of good fresh yeast” to the mixture – which was exactly what I didn’t have!
And then, just a couple weeks ago, I read a book that cleared up more of the mystery for me (and solved myproblem ofhow to make my own yeast.) The book is The Vintage Remedies Guide to Bread, written by Jessie Hawkins of the Vintage Remedies School of Natural Health. This book is a fascinating read for anyone interested in the subjects of bread, grains, gluten, modern vs. traditional bread, etc.
A Brief History of Homemade Yeast
Once of the most helpful bits of information I found by reading this book was the section on the history of bread and yeast. I learned that modern baker’s yeast, as we know it today, didn’t even exist until 1868. Before then, bread and other baked goods were leavened by other types of wild yeast (or with massive quantities of eggs.)
Even once baker’s yeast became available, though, it was too expensive for some to afford and it wasa gradual process for housewives and bakers to get used to this “new-fangled” way of making bread, so many cookbooks published after 1868 still include recipes that call for homemade yeast.
“Emptyings”
In addition to the recipes for making yeast with hops or potatoes, I also saw several references to using “emptins” in old recipes as a leavening agent. These “emptins” or “emptyings” seem to be just as their name implies as far as I can tell – the emptyings of leftover dough and batter added to a crock or jar.
Descriptions I’ve read about emptyings seem to be pretty similar to the flour-water mixture for a sourdough starter with scraps of extra dough added to feed the starter. The main difference I’ve seen is thatseveral instructionsfor how to make emptyings call for using milk rather than water.
I’m not at all an expert on the history of yeast, and this is a topic I’ve only just begun to learn about, but my guess is that “emptyings” and “sourdough” may be related to some degree or at least similar. In all of the 19th century recipes I’ve seen and in the entire database of the Historic American Cookbook Project, I have yet to find one recipe that uses the word “sourdough,”but I have seen several recipes that refer to using a sourdough-typeleavening.
(Update: I’ve learned from talking with the interpreters at Old Sturbridge Village that one reason why sourdough yeast isn’t mentioned in old cookbooks could be because it wasn’t a preferred flavor for bread at the time, or at least not in the New England area. Since the flavor of sourdough can vary depending on where you live, it’s possible that that’s one reason why it was more popular in the West in places like California. Early 19th century taste might have preferred bread made with yeast that was made from hard cider, beer, or some of the other homemade recipes using potatoes, hops, etc. so that might explain why sourdough isn’t mentioned in cookbooks of the period.)
I’d love to learn more about the history behind sourdough and about why it isn’t specifically mentioned in the old cookbooks that I’ve looked through, but for now I’m glad to have found a way to make homemade yeast that is easy and doesn’t require any other ingredients other than flour and water.
Making a Sourdough Starter
Once I realized that I could use a sourdough starter for the “homemade yeast” required in so many old recipes, I was immediately interested in learning how to make my own. Making my own sourdough starter had always seemed to intimidating to me, though, which, of course, is why I had been procrastinating starting one for so long.
When I read The Vintage Remedies Guide to Bread, though, the process seemed a bit more simple and less intimidating. After all, people have been making sourdough starters for a long, long time without any complicated instructions for how to do it. So, I figured I might as well give it a try. Though I’ve seen many different sourdough starter recipes online, I decided to go with the simplest method of using only flour and water.
Here’s what I did after reading through all of the information in that book :
Materials and Ingredients
- Quart-Sized Wide-Mouth Mason Jars– I’d definitely recommend getting wide-mouthed ones. They make stirring the starter so much easier.
- Water – For best results, the water should be filtered water or spring water. Chlorine could kill the good bacteria the starter needs to survive.
- Flour – I used anorganic unbleached all-purpose flour
. (I’ve heard people say that using whole wheat flour can give an “off” flavor to the starter, so I choose to stick with all-purpose.) - Cheeseclothfor covering the jar. (Fruit flies love hovering around sourdough starters, so you want something that will keep them out but still allow air into the jar.)
. (I’ve heard people say that using whole wheat flour can give an “off” flavor to the starter, so I choose to stick with all-purpose.)Method for Making Homemade Yeast with a Sourdough Starter
- Day 1: Put about 1/2 cup flour and slightly less than 1/2 cup water into the mason jar and stir them together. I recommend starting small with the water and adding it gradually. These measurements don’t have to be exact. It’s more important to have the right texture than it is to have exact measurements. I don’t usually even measure out my flour and water when I am feeding my sourdough starter. If you scroll down further you can find a video that I made that shows the texture that you are looking for when you mix the flour and water together. The mixture should feel thicker than a pancake batter or a cake batter. You don’t want something as thick as biscuit dough that is really hard to stir, but you don’t want something really thin and runny either. You should feel a bit of resistance when you stir it. If it’s too thick or thin, you can add more water or flour as needed. Once you’ve mixed the flour and water, cover the jar with cheese cloth and twist on the ring of the jar but not the lid. The cheesecloth will take the place of where the lid would be and will allow air to get into the starter.
- Day 2: About 24 hours later (it doesn’t have to be exact), feed the starter by giving it about another 1/2 cup of flour and as much water as it needs to reach the same thick batter consistency as the first day you mixed. The starter might have a few bubbles in it by this point. Stir and cover again.
- Day 3: By now, if not sooner, the starter should be looking quite a bit more bubbly, and the top might look almost frothy. Feed again the same as on Day 2, stir,and cover again.
- Day 4and following: Keep feeding the starterabout every 24 hours. Itshould lookactively bubbly. By days 5-7, it mightbe ready to bake with. A lot really depends on the climate of where you live, the temperature inside your house, and the type of starter you have – each region has it’s own unique strains of bacteria sostarters in different regions might act differently and starters tend to be a bit slower in colder weather.
I probably tried baking with mine a bit earlier than most instructions for making sourdough would tell you to do. I was too impatient and too excited to wait, though, so I just went ahead and baked with it. And it worked! My bread rose well enough – maybe not as well as it would have risen if I had waited a little longer, but it was still a perfectly edible loaf of bread.
So, when in doubt, I’d say just try to bake with it and see what happens. The end result might not be perfect the first time, but it will probably still be pretty good, and it will get better as your starter gets more established.
If you don’t see any activity in your starter at all by day 5 or so (no bubbles and it doesn’t look like it has risen in the jar at all,) then you probably will need to try again and start over. That happens sometimes since it is wild yeast and not something you can really control well.
Once your starter is established, you can probably get away with feeding it a little bit less. I haven’t been feeding mine every single day, and it’s still surviving fine. I’ve been using it quite a bit in different baking experiments, so I’ve kept my starter out on the counter, but if you aren’t planning to bake more than once a week, it’s best to keep it in the fridge so you don’t have to feed it as often and so it doesn’t grow to massive proportions and overflow the jar. If you keep it in the fridge, though, you just have to plan ahead and take it out the day before you want to bake and feed it to make sure it’s active enough.
I’m loving being able to try so many “new” old recipes now that call for cups of homemade yeast. I’ve even branched out now and triedmaking a cakewith my sourdough starter (and it was absolutely delicious!)
I was fully expecting my first experiment with sourdough to be a failure, and I was prepared to try it over again several times before I had any success, so I was incredibly surprised and happy when my starter seemed to work right the first time around!
Update 10/22/13: My sourdough starter is still working well, and I’ve been using it regularly to make bread and pancakes.
Update 10/17/16: My starter is still active and working well over three years later!
Update 4/09/20: A couple of years ago (I don’t remember the exact date) my starter developed a bit of an off smell (a little like nail polish remover) probably because I hadn’t fed it often enough and it was summertime so it was more active with the warmer weather and required more regular feeding. Rather than trying to save it, I decided to use my backup sourdough starter (which was actually part of the original starter, so in a sense I’m still using the same starter even though the backup was in the freezer for awhile.) Once the backup starter thawed from the freezer, I started regular feeding (I usually feed mine four days a week) and it’s been going strong for me for the past couple of years.
Update: 10/02/23: A couple of weeks ago, my sourdough starter developed a very bad smell and there were some darker colored, speckled places around the edges of the jar. I debated about whether or not to try to scrape off the top layer of the starter and salvage some of the starter at the bottom, but I decided to just start over since the starter smelled pretty bad. I’m not quite sure exactly what happened, but I think that either something else got in the jar besides flour and water, or I might have waited too long to transfer the starter to a new jar. You can keep your starter in the same jar for a while, but eventually you will get a lot of dried starter around the edge of the jar that will start getting a bit nasty looking and smelling if you leave it there, so it’s a good idea to transfer your starter to a fresh clean jar every couple of weeks. Even though I was sad to lose the starter I had been using for so long, it also gave me an opportunity to make a new one and to try this process all over again, and this time I filmed some video clips of the process that will hopefully give you a visual of how it looked as I was making it.
Here is a video to show you a bit more of what the process looks like from start to finish:
For more information about maintaining your starter and for sourdough troubleshooting tips, check out my other sourdough posts.
- How Often Should You Feed a Sourdough Starter?
- How to Use Less Flour for Feeding a Sourdough Starter
- Tips for Using and Maintaining a Sourdough Starter – Part 1
- Tips for Using and Maintaining a Sourdough Starter – Part 2
- How to Make A Backup Sourdough Starter
You can also try my favorite sourdough bread recipe:
- Easy Homemade Sourdough Bread Recipe from 1869
And, since the flavor of homemade yeast can vary depending on where you live and the particular strains of wild yeast in that area, if you decide that you don’t care for the flavor of your homemade yeast, you can also find traditional sourdough starters online to use for your homemade baking.
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The information in this post is not to be taken as medical advice and is not intended to diagnose or treat any disease.
