Wild Yeast Bread

So I wanted to try this out....making bread with wild yeast (captured or cultivated - but not from a commercial source)...you know...not the yeast you can buy in the store.

I found this on my Fresh Loaf site (one of my favorite baking sites), which looked easy enough for even me to try.

I've been snapping pics the second go round - as I was too impatient the first time round....it takes a long time to make bread without commercial yeast to fluff it up :)

So first you start with filtered water, organic material & sugar (to speed things up - but not required). I am using raisins as it seems to work really well for a starter - I'm going to experiment with rice, apples, tea leaves, etc - but for now - raisins.

As you see - I've put the water, sugar, raisins together in a plastic dish that I can put the top on tight. I put it all together, give it a big shake and then open the top to keep the airflow going, but the bugs out (it's just loose on the top). This picture was taken at about 8:30 am.

This second picture (yes, very close up) is at about 11am. Now I cheated a bit - I used some of the raisin water I had left over from my last loaf to start this one and it really speeds things up. I didn't get to this stage the first time around until almost day 3! So - it's really a quick thing to do once you have your first batch going. By 3pm - it was bubbling away and ready to go, so I made my pre-ferment (I was planning on that tomorrow - but it was ready). I'm going to leave the water out overnight and put it in the fridge tomorrow (fruit and all) with the lid on tight and that should keep for about a month.

To use, you need to revive (I put mine out 24 hours in advance and added a bit of sugar to perk things up).

I made the pre-ferment and it grew and grew!


So the picture above - is at 8pm tonight (about 5 hrs after I set the pre-ferment to go) and below you'll see what the pre-ferment started out looking like....it is 3.0 oz of yeast water and 3.5 oz of whole wheat flour (I suppose you could use any kind of flour .... will be experimenting with that) and you let it sit with a loose lid on the counter. Tomorrow I'll make the dough and let it rise the 5 - 7 hrs for each rise and see the loft :)