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Yeast, to Make (for Bread)
INGREDIENTS.-1½ oz. of hops, 3 quarts of water, 1 lb. of bruised malt, ½ pint of yeast.
Boil the hops in the water for 20 minutes; let it stand for about 5 minutes, then add to it 1 lb. of bruised malt prepared as for brewing. Let the mixture stand covered until about lukewarm; then put in not quite 1/2 pint of yeast; keep it warm, and let it work 3 or 4 hours; then put it into small-pint bottles (ginger-beer bottles are the best for the purpose), cork them well, and tie them down. The yeast is now ready for use; it will keep good for a few weeks, and 1 bottle will be found sufficient for 18 lbs. of flour. When required for use, boil 3 lbs. of potatoes without salt, mash them in the same water in which they were boiled, and rub them through a colander. Stir in about 1/2 lb. of flour, then put in the yeast; pour it in the middle of the flour, and let it stand warm on the hearth all night, and in the morning let it be quite warm when it is kneaded. The bottles of yeast require very careful opening, as it is generally exceedingly ripe.
TIME.-20 minutes to boil the hops and water, the yeast to work 3 or 4 hours.
This is a barm — a live, hop-flavoured brewer's-style leaven — plus the potato sponge for using it. Nothing here is dangerous, but several of the figures have been mangled in transmission and one step needs real caution.
- Hop quantityThe hop quantity was checked against the printed page: it reads 1½ oz. of hops to 3 quarts of water, as our text now gives.
- "1/21 pint of yeast"A typographical collision of 1/2 pint, confirmed by the method, which says "not quite 1/2 pint of yeast." That is a scant 10 fl oz of active barm from a previous batch or from a brewer.
- Bruised maltMalted barley cracked between rollers, as a brewer would mill it — not malt extract, not malted milk powder. Its purpose is to release fermentable sugar into the hop liquor so the yeast has something to feed on.
- The temperature hinge"Let the mixture stand covered until about lukewarm" is the step that decides whether this works. Liquid that is still hot will kill the yeast, so the wort must be cooled to about blood heat or a little below -- comfortable to hold your hand in -- before pitching.
- Bottling actively working yeastCorking and tying down a liquid that is still fermenting builds real pressure — which is why the recipe warns that the bottles need "very careful opening." Thick-walled ginger-beer bottles were specified for exactly that reason. Modern thin glass and screw caps are not equivalent, and any bottle of live barm should be kept cold and vented regularly.
- Keeping"A few weeks" assumed a cold larder. Refrigerated, the barm loses vigour steadily; judge it by whether it still froths when warmed with a little sweetened flour and water rather than by the calendar.
- ScaleOne pint bottle raises 18 lb of flour — around a dozen large loaves. For a single 1-2 lb loaf you need a small fraction of a bottle, and the potato sponge that follows (3 lb potatoes, 1/2 lb flour) should be scaled down in proportion.
- The overnight sponge"Stand warm on the hearth all night" means a steady, gentle warmth rather than heat. A modern kitchen at ordinary room temperature works; anywhere much warmer will exhaust the sponge before morning.
- If you simply want to bakeTwo teaspoons of dried yeast, or 1/2 oz fresh, replaces the bottle for a household batch of dough. Making the barm is worth doing for the hop and malt flavour it carries into the crumb, not for convenience.
Before compressed yeast became a reliable shop purchase in the later nineteenth century, most bakers begged, bought or brewed their leaven. Barm — the yeasty head thrown up by fermenting ale — was the standard raising agent, and where a household did not live near a brewery it made its own by boiling hops, mashing a little malt and pitching in some of the last batch, exactly as here. The hops were not only for flavour: their resins suppress bacterial souring, which is why hopped barm keeps for weeks where an unhopped one turns quickly. The potato sponge that closes the entry is the other half of the system, a warm, starchy overnight ferment that gave the sluggish barm time to build enough gas for a big household baking.