do it yourself yeast?

Hops are little flowers that taste good with fermented grains. They don't really resemble barley at all.

I would ask over at rec.food.sourdough.

Hi Allan,

Yes, lots of folks make their own cultures to raise bread. It is rather easy.

First, a few thoughts:

There are many suggestions out there that involve grapes, raisins, and all manner of other fruit etc.

The culture that you want is a symbiotic mix of wild yeasts and lactobacilli. The yeasts occur naturally on the grain (and thus are in the flour. The lacto critters occur naturally (are you ready for this?) on, and in, the baker (that would be you...)

Here's the process:

You will need flour, water, and time. Organic flour is likely to be best, though I have succeeded many times with regular ol' flour off the super market shelf.

One other thought: There are billions of appropriate critters in every gram of flour. Many descriptions of this process have one doubling the amount of material until having oceans of culture. That is hard to manage, and is also wasteful. Instead, think in terms of teaspoons of flour and water...

And here is the method:

Take a small amount of flour (say two teaspoons) and mix it into a rather thick batter with clean, unchlorinated, water. Put the mix aside in a place (ideally) at about 80F for 24 hours. Put a cover on the container (and no, it will not explode if the lid is air tight.)

After 24 hours, discard half of it, and then add a teaspoon of flour, and enough water to get back to the "thick batter" consistency. Put it aside for another 24 hours.

After a few cycles of this process, you are likely to notice some changes: You may see some bubbles, or even an increase in volume of the mixture. (BTW, observing volume increases is extremely difficult in round bottomed bowls. I would suggest using a container of cylindrical shape if you have one.)

After about a week, it is very likely that when you add the flour to the mix you will see a gradual increase in volume over a few hours. If you do, you have a culture that you can use for baking.

At that point, get back to me here, or at rec.food.sourdough.

Have fun, and keep me posted,

Hi again,

I just re-read my post, and realized that I left something out:

Yeasts do, indeed, grow on grapes and other things, but they cannot live when fed flour. As a result, if you want to use grapes or some such, it is best to simply eat them while you prepare your starter with flour and water only...

All the best,

Thanks to Kenneth for tellling me how to make my own culture for making bread.

Is it doomed if the water is chlorinated?

I think the water here is chlorinated. I could try to get bottled water but I think that a lot of bottled water is just someone else's tap water.

Ignorantly, Allan Adler snipped-for-privacy@zurich.ai.mit.edu

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• Disclaimer: I am a guest and *not* a member of the MIT Artificial *

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• in any way on MIT. Moreover, I am nowhere near the Boston *

• metropolitan area. *

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Water is chlorinated to kill off just the sort of critters that, for this purpose, we want to grow.

Indeed, bottled water is often just "someone else's" tap water, but the label will surely tell you if it is chlorinated.

Have fun,

Hi again,

Let's continue this at rec.food.sourdough,

Almost all water from the tap has a bit of chlorine. However, if you let water sit for 24 hours the chlorine dissipates. This is "aged" water that serious aquarium-keepers keep on hand.

How do you know your sourdough doesnt contain some deadly bcteria culture?

Regards, NT

Howdy,

I don't know enough of the biochemistry to provide you the reason, but apparently the characteristics of the symbiosis between the naturally occurring yeasts and lactobacilli prevent the growth of pathogens.

Others will be able to tell you more,