Transition in Action #2: Making a Yeast Starter

I have taken a pretty active interest in bread baking recently, and I noticed that a big portion of my bread making activity went to yeast. I was making the rookie mistake of buying packets of yeast which are incredibly expensive for what you get from them. So, I got on the internet to find out if there were alternatives. I came across a few different techniques for cultivating yeast from scratch or keeping yeast from a previous batch of bread. Both techniques result in the creation of something called a starter.

How does this have anything to do with Transitioning? Well, my thoughts on this go something like this; If I can learn how to keep a yeast starter, I can free myself from an anchor to regular society if the need arises. In my research I found out there is a reason that San Fransisco became famous for their sourdough breads. During the gold rush, when there was not enough supply of commercial yeast, bakers were forced to cultivate wild yeast in order to meet demand for bread. One person's, or in that case many peoples', know-how provided an asset to the community at large thereby making the community more resilient. And so goes my thinking in regard to many activities that make me more self-reliant individually in turn make my community more resilient in the face of resource instability.

Enough digression, I should get back to making my yeast starter. Well, my first attempt at making a starter of sorts was the Amish Friendship Bread Starter. Although it is pretty tedious and required daily attention for 10 days, I decided that it was worth a shot. I am sitting here writing this after a few hours with my baking hat on and I am sorry to say that my attempt to follow this recipe seems to have failed. I attempted to make a recipe for a simple wheat bread and I am looking at my unleavened dough sitting in a bowl more than two hours after I created it. I am hoping that it will rise, but based on what information I can find, it seems it will not.

So, back to the drawing board for me. After some additional reading online, I found out that what I tried likely does not have a lot of active yeast left after the 10 day process. Instead, it seems that the best way to start a starter, is by strictly following instructions similar to the ones that I found here. Notably, the author of that website also recommended sending off for a good starter instead of making your own. Although that eliminates the "emergency situation" component of it, I don't mind the idea of buying a starter from a neat non-profit like this one.

I will keep you updated with the state of both starts, and I hope to share some good news with you about the 5 cups of flour that is wrapped up in my still unleavened Amish Friendship Bread.