Wild Yeast Pizza Crust
Here’s the pizza we made with the starter, plus a pic of our starter.
I took the rubber ring off of this jar, and its been working really well as a home for it.
Here’s a link for the recipe that I used. Pizza Crust Recipe.
It came out pretty good. We are going to try it again this week and let the crust rise.
Wild Yeast and Pizza!
Sourdough waffles, made them vegan
I used this recipe for vegan sourdough waffles…its pretty much the same as the recipe from King Arthur, but with changes to make it vegan. Here’s the link:http://bittersweetblog.wordpress.com/2008/05/26/the-little-sourdough-that-could/
100% Whole Wheat Bread from Culture Club Project Member Melissa! Great Job!
Whole Wheat 1-2-3 bread
We finally got the starter out of the trunk last Friday. I know, it had been in the car, all alone for a week. I had to go through the three day feeding process before I could use it…and guess what: all I had on hand was Trader Joe’s 100% White Whole Wheat flour. Not being one to follow a recipe, I went ahead and fed the starter with what I had. A few hours later it was bubbly and gooey, so maybe it would be ok. Three days later, I had about 3 cups of starter, and I wanted to make some bread. I’m also the person who skips over the simple easy projects and goes straight to the intermediate. So I pestered Culture Club for the recipe. It was pretty easy, just mixed it up and threw it in the fridge overnight. Then took it out this morning, let it sit on my counter for a few hours, then put it in the oven for about 23 minutes. The result was yummy, chewy, whole wheat sourdough bread. I think next time, I’ll make it with half all purpose, and half whole wheat flour. That is, if i have all purpose on hand.
Making Waffles
You could make this delicious breakfast once a week, and still be able to give some yeast to your friends. This calls for 1 Cup of wild yeast, something you can get from your yeast twice a week. Here’s the recipe
You can make your own cultured butter and buttermilk for this recipe.
Churning butter at home is easy, and a bit magical.
Once you’ve got culture in your cream, fill a container no more than 1/2 way with the cultured cream and secure the leak-proof top.
Shake the cream. It is a nice way to churn it you can watch TV, listen to house music or even run around the neighborhood.
When the cream is shaken it expands and it will fill like the jar is filled and nothing is moving—keep at it! You’re almost there.
You’ll feel like the cream will never turn. Someone in the room will want to shake it for a while—don’t let them! You did the hard part!
Then BooM! All at once the immovable foam separates into butter and buttermilk.
Keep shaking to pull out as much of the buttermilk as you can and then strain it through some cheese cloth (four layers), lined in a strainer.
Squeeze out the remaining buttermilk fold the cheese cloth over the butter and put a can of beans (or something else somewhat heavy) on the butter and set it aside to drain overnight. If it is going to be warm, put it in the fridge so that the butter stays firm.
When you taste this butter you’ll know why “European” butter is so expensive, and you’ll end up always making your butter this way.
The great bonus, is that you end up with a premium butter at the cost of cream, and you get buttermilk for free! What to do with the butter and buttermilk?
More Culture in Our Butter
For those of you who made it to our opening event and were able to try some 1:2:3 bread, you may have noticed that the butter was not in a nice rectangular shape.
That’s because the butter had some culture. Specifically, it was hand made cultured butter. In the traditional (read “old”) way of making butter in Europe one would milk the cows and put the milk on the cold stone in the pantry. As the milk separated from the cream (the latter rising to the top as it will) the cream would be skimmed off and put in a separate container for churning. Churning wouldn’t be a daily task, so the cream would sit around a day or four before it became butter. As the cream would sit, bacteria in the air would swoop in and convert the sugars in the cream to lactic acid giving the resulting butter more flavor.
Here are two ways of getting cultured butter in the US today.
1) Buy a good pasteurized organic heavy cream from a reliable source (Clover or Strauss are great) and to every pint of cream add a large Tablespoon of organic plain yogurt, with active bacteria, (again Strauss is great for this)
2) Buy a good raw organic heavy cream from a reliable source and let it sit out on your kitchen counter for a few days.
If you try the second method with pasteurized cream you’ll not get the bacteria to form well. You can do either method with raw cream.
Let the culture grow. This is a matter of taste, we let it grow for about 3-4 days, the more you let it grow the more flavor you’ll get in your butter. If you want to really expand on this you can add specific cultures to change the flavors. We suggest you start with yogurt cultures, and move into some of the cheese cultures to see what you like, we use the bacteria in the air, or plain yogurt for our butter.
Wild Yeast Culture’s ready to be adopted, accompanied by 1:2:3 bread and fresh, hand-churned cultured butter.
Replenishing Your Yeast When You’ve Used Some:
Once you’ve used some of your yeast for a recipe you’ll want to feed it to replenish what you’ve taken.
If your recipe calls for 1/2 cup of starter yeast then feed the remainder with 1/2 cup lukewarm water and 1/2 cup of flour.
Let this sit covered for 2-4 hours until it’s bubbly, the return to the fridge.
Feeding Your Starter
1 - Stir the starter and discard 1 cup or give 1 cup to a friend or neighbor, OR use the one cup to make waffles, or crumpets, or 1:2:3 bread.
2 - Feed the remaining starter with 1 cup lukewarm (not over 90˚F) water and 1 cup of all-purpose flour. The ratio is always equal parts water to flour.
3 - Let it sit at room temp for 4-12 hours, till its bubbly. It’s now “fed” and ready to use or be put back in the fridge.
When to Feed Your Yeast
General feeding times for your starter:
Feed your starter at least once every two weeks.
Feed it as often as every three days.
You can feed it up to 12 hours before you want to bake with it.
Wild Yeast Waffles
Waffles:
This recipe is from King Arthur Flour and it is a good way to use some of the yeast as you feed it.
The night before you want your waffles stir together:
2 Cups of all purpose flour
2 Tablespoons sugar
2 Cups buttermilk
1 Cup of starter (wild yeast)
Cover this mixture and let it rest at room temperature overnight.
The next morning:
beat together
2 eggs
1/4cup of melted butter
Add this mixture to the mixture you made the night before.
then Add:
3/4 teaspoons of salt
1 teaspoon of baking soda
Stir to combine.
The batter will begin to bubble.
Pour your batter on a pre-heated waffle iron and bake according to the manufacturer’s instructions, (everyone keeps those right? — if you didn’t never fear, put the batter on the iron and when the steam nearly stops coming out your waffles are done!) If you have a Belgian Waffle Iron use that, the crisp and light as air quality is perfect with the deep flavor of this waffle dough.
(Source: kingarthurflour.com)
Instructions for when you first get your yeast
Put your specimen it in a large ceramic or glass bowl. (Make sure you don’t use aluminum - it’s reactive.)
Add 1cup of water and 1 cups of flour.
Stir it all together and let it sit at room temperature for 2 to 4 hours. You should see bubbles by then. Transfer the dough to a storage container like tupperware or a glass jar, cover and put it in the fridge.
Make sure if you have a container with a screw top, that you don’t tighten it all the way, the yeast needs to be covered but needs the ability to give off gas.
Let it sit overnight in the fridge and then feed it again every day for the next three days. You can feed the yeast in the same container you are using as it’s home in the fridge. If your container ends up being too small, just transfer it to a larger container. After this initial set up your yeast will not grow any larger, unless you want it to.
At this point you’ll have enough yeast to use and still keep the culture alive and well.
Maybe you’ll want to treat yourself to some sourdough waffles!
In the Beginning…
On February 19, 2011 some of you accepted the invitation to participate and left our art studio with a portion of the wild yeast to cultivate and nurture.
Grow the yeast. Make bread. Share the yeast. Share your stories and participate in future events. We’ll be tracking our community and witnessing our cultures growth (and eat some amazing food along the way).
If you were not able to take one of the yeast specimens with you at the open studios you can still participate. e-mail us and we’ll contact you with how to get a specimen and begin participating.
