How Cultivated

It’s always fascinated me, the mysteries of bread, simple, delicious, nourishing and in its most simplistic form, incredibly interesting, the engine room of any loaf lies in its raising agent, whether its yeast, chemical, dairy or mechanical, all of which have an air of magic that never fails to amaze.

“I remember seeing a cookery demonstration where an over zealous Baker explained that sour dough bread was made without yeast ..”

Recently I was reminded of an extra step that delved a little deeper into the bread making process than one normally ventures, but without a doubt, it’s a step that upgrades your loaf from delicious to stunning.

We’re in fact surrounded by yeast its everywhere… but it likes sugar and in particular, can be found on the surface of most fruits.

If that’s the case why do we use so much cultivated yeast? Well it’s that dreadful modern problem we call ‘convenience’.

Cultivated bakers yeast has only been around since 1927 (according to the patent office) Before that, starters, poolish’s, levain, bigas, barm’s and sour doughs were the order of the day..

So how do they work? Well as previously stated yeast is everywhere, not only is it on most fruit but it’s also in the actual flour, the less processed the flour the more prevalent the yeast… so normally if your making a sour dough you would mix some pure water ( yeast doesn’t like fluoride’s or other water cleaning agents) with flour and let it ferment. However if you want to give it both a kick start as well as a boost in flavour you can make a yeast water.

And believe me you won’t be disappointed.

So where do we start… well we need fruit which we can harvest yeast from consistently and all year round… most fruits have a season which limits their availability at certain times of the calendar.. it also has to be rich in sugar as we know that sugar attracts yeast.

With all that in mind dried fruits seem to be the answer as they are readily available, rich in sugar and as all wine makers know grapes have a readily available layer of yeast on them ( yes that’s yeast not dust !)

As I had a pile of sultanas and a box of medjool dates in my cupboard it seemed only logical to start there.

In a steralised jar, and I can’t stress how important it is to sterilise all your tools for this exercise. We are creating an environment in which to cultivate a culture … we need to make sure we only cultivate good culture and not the bad stuff.

So, in a jam jar place 100g of sultanas and 100g of pure or bottled water and a teaspoon of malt extract, if you don’t have that just use some sugar, preferably brown.

Place in a warm-ish area with a lid on. I have an old yogurt maker that moderates temperature at around 30°Celsius which is perfect for this job.

And leave for a few days.

After 24 hours open the jar to allow some oxygen in… it needs to breath, replace the lid and give it a quick agitation or shake depending on how brave your feeling… it’s best to do this after you’ve opened the lid to allow it to breath and not before as pressure can build especially after a couple of days. Repeat this process for a few more days until about day 4 or 5 depending on how warm it is.

Once the fruit has floated to the top of the jar and you can see bubbles, we’re almost done…

That’s your fruit yeast water made.

With a weighing scale weigh out 100g of flour and 100g of yeast water. Mix well and place it in a sterile glass jar in the nice warm environment your yeast water did so well in.

Watch in awe as the starter comes to life and ferociously bubbles upwards in its new lovely home.

Once it’s more than doubled in size it’s ready to be treated like a normal starter for sourdough… but let me assure you, there’s nothing normal about this starter.