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Yeast Without Yeast
This requires no yeast to raise it, and has been called the "best yeast in the world." Monday morning, boil one pint hops in two gallons water for half an hour, strain into a crock and let the liquid become lukewarm, add two even tea-spoons salt and half a pint best brown sugar; mix half a pint flour smooth with some of the liquor, and stir all well together. On Wednesday, add three pounds potatoes boiled and mashed, stir well and let stand till Thursday, then strain and put in stone-jugs, but for the first day or two leave the corks quite loose.
Stir the yeast occasionally while making, and keep near the fire. It should be made two weeks before using, aud will keep any length of time, improving with age. Keep it in a cool place, and shake the jug before pouring from it, but with the cork out, holding the palm of the hand over the mouth to prevent the escape of the yeast.
A wild-fermented hop yeast, made in bulk over four days and stored as a liquid. It works, but it is slower and less predictable than any packaged yeast, and the schedule matters more than the quantities.
- The hinge: lukewarm, not hotThe flour and later the potato must go in only after the hop water has cooled to blood heat, around 100F or below. Liquid straight off the boil will cook the flour into paste and kill the airborne and flour-borne yeasts the whole method depends on.
- Hops by volume"One pint hops" means a pint measure of dried hop flowers, perhaps half an ounce to an ounce by weight depending on how tightly packed, not hop pellets. The hops are there for bitterness and their antibacterial resins, which suppress spoilage bacteria while yeast establishes; they are not merely flavouring.
- VesselsA crock is a wide glazed earthenware jar, and any nonreactive food-grade bucket or large glass jar serves. "Stone-jugs" are stoneware, commonly salt-glazed; use glass or plastic so you can see the activity.
- Leave it loose, permanentlyThe instruction to leave the corks loose "for the first day or two" is the one point to ignore. A live liquid starter continues to produce carbon dioxide indefinitely, and a tightly stoppered jug can build enough pressure to burst. Store it covered but vented.
- "Keep near the fire"In practice a warm spot, the warm end of a kitchen rather than direct heat; somewhere in the seventies Fahrenheit suits it. In a cold room the schedule stretches out considerably; much above 90F you favour souring bacteria over yeast.
- Best brown sugarIn the period this meant a moist, partly refined sugar. Modern light brown sugar is the nearest thing; half a pint is a cup, roughly 7 oz packed.
- Scale and yieldTwo gallons is a farmhouse quantity, enough to leaven bread for weeks. Quartering the recipe gives a manageable two quarts. Liquid yeasts of this kind were used by the half-cup or so per large loaf, with a long rise of several hours rather than one.
- Judging itA healthy batch smells yeasty, bitter and faintly beery, and foams when shaken. A batch that smells of nail polish, vinegar or mould has gone the wrong way and should be discarded rather than nursed.
Households that baked their own bread before the 1870s generally had to keep yeast alive between bakings, and hop-and-potato liquid yeasts like this one were a common American answer: the hops held bacteria in check, the potato and sugar fed the yeast, and the long maturing built up a population vigorous enough to keep for weeks in a cool cellar. The habit faded once compressed fresh yeast became widely available in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, often traced to the Fleischmann brothers' promotion of it at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia; cookbooks from the 1880s onward frequently print both, the old hop yeast and the new cake yeast.