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Dry Hop Yeast
1 pint of strong, thick, stock yeast. 1 pint of fresh ferment. 1 pound of corn meal. 1 pound of flour. 2 tablespoonfuls of sugar.
By thick stock is meant some that is not watered down to the common point of using, but left with more consistence for this purpose. Mix all together a stiff dough, without kneading. Cut out in suitable cakes and dry them in a cool place as quickly as possible, turning over frequently. If covered with meal and dried under a slight pressure of board and weight till so much of the moisture is expelled that they cannot ferment, these cakes will be as free from breakage as the dry yeast of the stores. Either way they will be found very strong and ready both for bread or yeast making. A brand of dry yeast with a German name that is sold in tin-foil packages, is made as above with starch and flour. The starch absorbs more moisture--takes up more yeast.
There are then several kinds of yeast. Of compressed yeast, the all in all and first necessity with many bakers, this little book will not have much to say. It is neither better nor worse than that we make ourselves. Its one merit is that it saves the trouble of making either stock or ferment. In the largest hotels which have bakeries attached it is used and, saving labor, is as cheap as any. But it has to be purchased, and in the ordinary hotel and boarding house, after a month or two, the question invariably comes: "Can't you make your own yeast? So and so does, and they have splendid bread." Then the cook or pastry makes his own, and rather liking the independence it gives him, and not caring to change methods every month, the practice of using home-made yeast becomes the hotel rule.
All ignorant imaginings of luck, chance, water-witchery, mystery, hidden knowledge, moon's age and the like having to do with fermentation should, one would think, have been banished long before this; but such is not the case, as we are often reminded seeing how easily even some old hands will give up trying under the least stress of accident.
Two men, a few months since, started a "French Bakery"--so their handsome new sign had it--in the livest new city on the continent. The capitalist, with five years savings of some plodding business; the other partner, a routine shop baker from an eastern city. Large size portable oven procured at great expense, very large tent, all other fixtures suitable, high hopes of course, scores of such beginning had become fine stores doing a rushing business. First opening day bread very bad--gray color like rye--full of holes--rolls all run together shapeless, worse than bread. Blamed flour. Sent for the merchant author of their ruin. Merchant called referees, proved best flour in the state. Next day bread no better, could not be worse--blamed water, oven, dough trough, weather. Next day bread no better--blamed the luck, moon, planet, climate, salt. Ran to place of one of referees where glorious bread was made and borrowed some good yeast.
Next day had good average baker's bread. But no more customers. All parties demoralized. Baker on a stool smoking said it was no use his trying in that town any more, because he had made his first yeast in the wrong quarter of the moon! Sold out for a song--capitalist raised enough to go back home with--baker lost.
Another case. The steward of a good hotel where the finest bread was known to be made, was sought by the owner of a bakery that had been running with good success for some time. "What brand of flour do you use? I must get some or close my shop. I have no more good bread and my trade is leaving me." "We use the best--such a brand." "Why, I have that, but they must have changed quality on me." "That does not seem possible, for you got the other half of the same car load as ours. Perhaps you will find the fault is with your baker. He did well in warm weather; now the nights are cold. His yeast has run out" Correct. Some changes, and the business recovered and has grown. In one of those Florida hotels, years ago, they tried to do without engaging a pastry cook for the season, and might have got along very well had it not been for the inscrutable mystery that so envelops yeast as to make it impossible for ordinary home folk to ever penetrate to the bottom of it. The company was coming but the yeast would not come nor the light bread. The family carryall was sent fifty miles for a baker, in haste. He came, he saw, he made some mash and poured it very warm into their cold and inert yeast, and in an hour it was all life, overflowing the top and filling another jar besides. Such wonderful witchcraft as he understood they never could expect to learn, so he had to stay the season through. It was well for him that he understood yeast. Scientists tell us that yeast is a plant, a festive sort of microscopic fungus, or multitudinous mass of it, of exuberant growth under the usuual conditions favorable to plant life. There is any desired amount of natural philosophy besides the above to be found in studying the singular ways of yeast, such as the different kind of fermentation and the changes produced in the flour, but the really practical thing for bread-makers' profit to remember is that one point that yeast is a plant and to be cared as such. As plants grow fast under the influence of warmth and moisture so does yeast. Hot water poured into a bed of plants will kill them and the same excess of heat kills yeast, whether the ferment be too hot it to which the starting yeast is poured, or whether the dough be made too hot when it is set with yeast in it to rise. As a root or seed will be in the ground for months without growing if the ground be cold so will yeast remain without life in a similar condition. And as a plant may be unnaturally forced to a sickly rapidity of growth till it falls of its own weight so do yeast and dough act when they are hurried too much by being kept as hot as they can be without killing them. The best bread and yeast are made by giving plenty of time and gentle temperature for all the processes to be carried out in a natural manner.
Accidental freezing solid does not kill yeast, nor seem to injure it. This refers only to common degrees of cold, not extremes.
This is a leaven, not a bake: a way of turning liquid yeast into dry cakes that keep. The hinge is moisture — the cakes must lose enough water to stop fermenting before mould or wild bacteria take hold, which is why the book insists on drying them as quickly as possible in a cool place.
- Stock yeast and ferment"Stock yeast" is the baker's kept mother — a hop-and-potato or hop-and-flour liquid yeast held over from the last batch, here left thick rather than diluted for use. "Ferment" is a fresh, actively working batch of the same, usually a few hours old and still foaming. Both are earlier recipes in books of this type; neither has a supermarket equivalent.
- Pints and poundsA pint is 2 cups. A pound of cornmeal is roughly 3 cups, a pound of flour roughly 3 1/2 to 4 cups, so the dry ingredients far exceed the liquid in volume — hence a stiff dough rather than a batter.
- Corn mealPeriod books also call this Indian meal. Use a plain yellow or white cornmeal, not a self-rising cornmeal mix, which carries leavening and salt.
- Why no kneadingKneading develops gluten. That does not help here: the object is a crumbly, quick-drying cake, not a loaf.
- Drying temperatureThe book says only 'cool place' and gives no figure. Keep the cakes well below blood heat: warmer and they ferment faster than they dry, and real heat kills the yeast outright. Frequent turning and the light board-and-weight press exist to expose surface and speed water loss.
- Spoilage riskA damp flour cake dried slowly in still air can mould before it dries. Discard any cake that smells sour beyond a clean bready tang, shows fuzz, or feels tacky after a day or two. Fully dried cakes should be hard and snap rather than bend.
- Storage and strengthKeep the finished cakes airtight and cool; the freezer suits them, and the author is right that ordinary cold does not kill yeast. Potency falls off over weeks regardless, so test a cake in warm sweetened water before committing a batch of dough to it.
Dry yeast cakes were the household answer to a problem compressed yeast had only recently solved for professionals: how to keep a live culture alive between bakings. Before commercial fresh yeast became widely available in the later nineteenth century, American bakers and cooks commonly maintained a hop-based liquid yeast, boiling hops with water and thickening the strained liquor with flour, cornmeal or potato, then keeping a portion back as stock. Drying that stock into cakes gave it months of shelf life and made it portable. The author's aside about "a brand of dry yeast with a German name that is sold in tin-foil packages" is a glance at the packaged competition of the day, and his long digression on bakers blaming the moon, the water and the flour when the real fault was a worn-out yeast tells you what the trade was actually anxious about. The plant analogy he closes with reflects the state of knowledge in his period: Pasteur's demonstration that fermentation is the work of a living organism had filtered down into practical baking manuals, where it was usually presented, as here, as a matter of warmth, moisture and not scalding your culture.