VT Coughtrey - baking with yeast and winemaking

Coughtrey home index to chapters galleries contact me

Yeastwork

I use yeast to make bread, cakes (yes, cakes) and alcoholic drinks. I'm no chef or expert wine-maker - I'm learning as I go along - but I thought you might be interested in the attempts and the results !

Comments (mine & Angela's) We've by now made a couple of hundred loaves of various kinds by this method, with somewhat inconsistent results in the early days, but no disasters. It's hard to achieve the textures you can get with dried yeast, probably because of the long rising time, but we love that slightly sour, slightly cheesey flavour.	1: Sourdough bread Basic recipe for for plain white 500g strong white flour tsp sugar tsp salt tbsp vegetable oil wild yeast (see below) A lot of my bread is made using wild yeast rather than dried yeast from a shop. Well, it was wild until I caught it and tamed it ! Yeast cultured from the wild is called the starter and the end result is known as sourdough bread. Until the 19th century, all leavened bread was made this way, so some call it 'real bread'. It has a mildly sour flavour, which is not to everyone's taste, but I find it quite addictive. Once you've got the starter going you can keep it going indefinitely. Some people claim to be using starter which has been going for over 150 years. Mine has been going for about a year. I thought it would be a good idea to begin this breadmaking section with an account of how I got the starter going.
	Initially I didn't intend to make sourdough bread at all. I made the starter by accident, which could well be unique. What happened was that I had some flour and water mixture left over after making a white sauce, and I forgot to put it in the fridge. It went off. It stank and looked revolting. However, I had already seen a sourdough website and realised what would happen next, if I followed the instructions on the site.
	They said that wild yeast (one of several moulds attacking the mixture) and lactobacilli (one of many sorts of bacteria attacking it) would soon gain the upper hand, as the mixture was an ideal growing medium for them. They would then see off, in a sort of military alliance, all the other moulds and bugs. I've since learned that it's rather more complicated than that, but it will do as a rough idea of what goes on. Sure enough, after a couple of weeks, the terrible smell was replaced by a lovely fruity smell and the colour of the mixture reverted to white. By scrupulously sterilizing all equipment, possibly with sodium metabisulphite, you may be able to avoid the unpleasant stage, but I wouldn't bank on it. After all, the 'bad' moulds and bugs can be in the air just like the 'good' ones, so sterilizing your equipment won't necessarily work.
It's better to use STRONG flour (available as white or wholemeal in most supermarkets) for any bread. It contains more gluten, which makes the dough more elastic and therefore more inclined to rise well.	To get a sourdough starter going, put 3 or 4 heaped tablespoons of of strong white flour in a small bowl with a level teaspoon of sugar. Gradually stir in water until you have something of the consistency of thick batter. Pour this into a standard-sized jam jar. The jar should now be about ¾ full - if not, add more batter or leave some out. Now cover LIGHTLY. If you cover it securely, it may not work at all, but if it does you could be in big trouble if the gas can't escape - BANG ! What I do is to put the lid on the jar, but so loosely that the yeast can initially get in, then the carbon dioxide gas produced by the yeast can easily get out. After anything from a few days to a couple of weeks, depending on room temperature, the mixture should start to ferment. If you're lucky it will smell good and look alright from the start. But more likely, it will smell awful ('vomit' is the usual description) and look rather nasty. Throw half of it away and top up again (back to ¾ full) with fresh flour and water batter, with half a teaspoon of sugar in it. Do this every day until the mixture smells and looks good. It's a good idea to make the batter with warmish (NOT hot) water each time, and to keep the jar in a fairly warm place. Once you're sure it's working well (there should be bubbles in it and a reasonable smell) you should put it in the fridge. This will slow it right down and enable you to leave it for up to 2 weeks instead of having to refresh it every day.
	When you wish to make a sourdough loaf, take the starter from the fridge two or three hours beforehand. Take a second jam jar and put half the contents of the original jar in it. Now top up both jars to ¾ full with fresh batter (as always, with a little sugar added), stir very well, cover loosely and stand in a warmish place for two or three hours. It's advisable to stand them on saucers, because if you're very successful, the starter will froth out of the jars to some extent, and that can be a bit messy!
We used to make wholemeal sourdough bread, but decided eventually that the sourdough flavour rather spoilt the wholemeal flavour. But why not try it? - you may not agree. Kneading techniques vary a lot. Ours is to flatten the dough initially into a rough square, then roll it up from top to bottom, flatten it it out again, then roll it from end to end, flatten it ...and so on.	When there's clear evidence that both jars are working quite vigorousl, put one jar back in the fridge. That's you 'permanent' jar. Place 500g of strong white flour in a large mixing-bowl, together with 1 level teaspoon of salt (or none, if your prefer). Some people add a teaspoon of sugar to feed the yeast, but as you've already put sugar in your starter, it tends to make the bread too sweet for my taste (and it's supposed to be sourdough!). The yeast shouldn't need any more sugar anyway. Add a tablespoon of oil and rub into the mixture as you would if making pastry. Now stir the entire contents of the starter jar - the 'temporary one that you haven't put in the fridge - into the mixture. Add sufficient tepid water to make a kneadable dough, form it into a rough ball and dump it onto a well-floured chopping-board If you've overdone the water, the flour on the chopping-board may be enough to compensate, but if the dough still sticks to your fingers and the board, you'll need to sprinkle more flour on the chopping-board. If, on the other hand, the dough cracks up a bit round the edges when you start kneading, and is a hard to knead, sprinkle a little more warmish water over it and work it well in. The dough should be soft and silky without being sticky. It's a very fine dividing-line! Knead for 10 or 15 minutes (hard work) until it's noticeably more elastic or 'chewing-gummy'.
It's an article of faith in breadmaking circles that the dough must be left to rise to its full extent, then 'knocked back' and re-kneaded. It's quite unnecessary (but bear in mind that it's heresy to say so!)	Now take a break to smear a loaf tin with oil, do the washing-up and have a cup of tea. The dough needs to be left for half an hour or so while you're doing all that. Unlike with granulated yeas, you can take your time over this break. Then knead the dough again, but not for so long this time. Finally, make a neat roll of it so that it fits into the tin. Place the whole thing inside a plastic bag and leave in a warm place.
	Unfortunately, sourdough is very unpredictable. It will take at least 3 hours to rise, but can take up to 12 hours! Just leave it until you're sure it hasn't risen any more for the past half-hour. Don't despair if there are no signs of it rising after several hours. Sometimes it takes off suddenly after showing no signs of life for about 6 hours. When your fairly sure it's stopped rising, pre-heat your oven to about 200C. Brush the top of the loaf with milk and put it in the oven. After 8-10 minutes reduce the heat to around 170C and bake for a further 25 minutes. Another unfortunate thing is that ovens vary tremendously in performance and calibration of the temperature control. For this reason it's quite likely that your first loaf, whether sourdough or made by the more conventional method with bought yeast, will be a bit of a disaster - burnt or underdone. You just have to find the right temperatures by trial and error. A loaf that's done has a characteristic hollow sound when tapped underneath. If you get the impression it's not done, put it back in the oven for a few more minutes. Let me know how you get on.

Other sourdough breads

rye

sesame

olive

onion