Capturing Free Range Wild Texas Yeast

Free-floating out there, like micro-cowboys, are strands of yeast. It's on your skin. It's in the air you snuffle. All of this is profoundly facinating to me.

For the last six or so months, I've had a bin in my fridge filled with 5 minute dough. I've made french bread for banh mi, pizza crusts, and all manner of quick-fix type breads. They're fast and easy, but they're not really special. And I go through a LOT of quick-rise yeast.

So when I started looking into bread "starters" (also called sourdough or levain) and discovered you can harvest your own wild yeast, it seemed like a totally awesome experiement. I'd be lying if I said it was, in any part, an attempt to provide some sort of teaching opportunity for the kids. The desire was totally born of wanting to have a jar of microorganisms flourishing on my counter, and have that NOT be gross.

I read the entire internet in search of tips and tricks for starting wild yeast colonies. There is a lot of information out there, and much of it is conflicting. Whatever. I picked something that looked the easiest and set out for an experiment.

Here's what you need, if you'll want to follow along at home:

1) Water (say 1/2 a cup)
This should be bottled water if you live in the city. Chlorine, which lives in most city tap water, is really good at killing off microorganisms like yeast. There are TONS of websites about getting chlorine out of tap water (apparently leaving it out overnight will do the trick), but getting distilled or spring water at the store is hella cheap, and it's not like you use a lot of it in this process.

2) Flour (the same amount as you have water)
I read a LOT of conflicting information about what sort of flour to use. A LOT. I used store-brand, all-purpose flour for this experiement and it totally worked. Some websites required incredibly precise ratios of specialty flours, usually from companies who make specialty flours.

3) a Vessel
I used a wide-mouth mason jar. Stick with glass or ceramic if you can. Apparently some metal and plastic containers can something something something? Eh, an old mug or olive jar will do just fine, and will prevent whatever dastardly thing metal or plastic leeching will do to your yeast.

4) A loose covering
I used a clean men's handkerchief. A dishtowel or other similar cotton bit of fabric would also do.

Mix the flour and water and set it out overnight somewhere warmish (between 72 and 80, therebouts). We live in Texas, so finding warm spots isn't a problem for us, but the hubby cranks up the air conditioning overnight, turning our kitchen into an arctic tundra. I stuck our jar outside to trap yeast (I figured there'd be more outside? Maybe?), as the low was 72*.

I scampered downstairs the next morning like it was Christmas, an discovered this:

Real, live, burping and farting Texas yeast, captured in my mason jar.

It really is as simple as that, though I've read about people having a harder time. Sometimes it's taken people a few days to catch it.

So why bother? Well, for starters, making something entirely by hand is profoundly satisfying, and bread is among the most satisfying - something fundamental to share with family and friends. From an early age, I'd make Irish soda bread with my mother, and it seemed to be a strange thing to substitute a chemical to make bread rise, and I can always taste the chemical flavor of baking soda any time I cook with it. The recipe I use for soda bread is over 150 years old, and it's always struck me as a curiosity that chemical leavening was a regular option in rural Ireland.

Then I started baking breads regularly, and it seemed even more strange. Ancient Egyptians didn't buy commercial yeast at the store for their bread and beer. If you're going to go through the trouble to make things by hand, why not really make it by hand? In an era where everyone lives on the back of a rocket ship, why not find the slow rituals that make things special?

So I started looking into commercial yeast, and was fairly bummed about what I found. Yes, it's uniform, trustworthy, and requires no maintenance. But that's what makes it so weird. The slow-rising process of natural yeast, combined with the symbiotic relationship between the yeast and the lacto-bacteria that accompany it, breaks down parts of the wheat husk that are indigestible. There's a really lovely article that discusses a number of health benefits of bread made with wild yeast, from reducing the body's glycemic index to reducing the number of colds and flus contracted.

So, once captured, what do you do with it?