Happy Yeast Beasties

This picture is teeming with life! Happy little yeast beasties burping and bubbling away, releasing gasses and who knows what else. You are looking at my wild yeast starter that I started back in October 2002. As far as wild yeast starters go (or any yeast starter for that matter) it's fairly young. There are some schools of thought that would even go as far as saying that it's not anywhere near it's peak until it has been allowed to ferment for a few years.

This culture is actually the offspring of a Mother culture that I started in October. The mother culture was an equal mixture of organic rye flour (I had read this was the best type of flour to use as it had the highest concentration of yeast making properties of all the flours) and distilled water. I fed the mixture twice daily for a week giving it the same 1 tablespoon each of water and flour every time. After a week the mixture was pretty strong smelling, not offensive, not even sour really, more like a barrel of Guinness that has gone off (nooo...not Guinness!). After a week I took a tablespoon of the Mother and put it into another bowl, feeding this bowl with Rye flour and distilled water but with the intention of introducing another type of flour gradually into the mix. I fed the mother one last time and put her in the fridge to retard her growth-(I take her out once every 2 weeks and give her a nice feed to keep her nourished). The offspring-which I've come to refer to as The Beast has gone through a complete alteration of flour and is no longer made of rye flour as it once originally was. Gradually introducing all-purpose white flour into the mixture until I stopped using rye flour completely I managed to change the properties of the yeast altogether. This batch has the texture and look of Marshmallow Fluff and smells very sour as well as yeasty. This is the starter I used for Chocolate Brownies and Coffee Cake #1. I've also been using it for pancake batter and I think I may have invented the best darn pancake batter ever, however my husband has refused to be the pancake guinea pig anymore. I'm going to make a few stacks of pancakes for a friend of mine and see what he says, if all goes well and he likes my pancakes, I'll post the recipe here in the next week or so.

Written by Deb on December 29, 2002 10:06 PM