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Good Yeast
Mrs. Packard.
Grate six good sized potatoes (raw); have ready a gallon of water in which has been well boiled three handfuls of hops; strain through a cloth or sieve, while boiling hot, over the potatoes, stirring until well cooked. or the mixture thickens like starch; add one teacup of sugar, one-half cup of salt; when sufficiently cool, one cup of good yeast. Let it stand until a thick foam rises upon the top. Care must be taken not to bottle too soon, or the bottles may burst. Use one coffee cup of yeast to six loaves of bread. If kept in a cool place this yeast will last a long time, and housekeepers need not fear having sour bread.
This is a bread starter, not a dish: a hop-and-potato ferment kept going from a cup of the previous batch. It works, but it behaves like a living culture rather than a packet of dry yeast.
- The hinge: don't bottle too soonThe original says it plainly and it is the one instruction that matters. Bottling while the ferment is still gassing builds pressure fast; wait until the thick foam has risen and fallen back, and even then store in a jar with a loose lid or in the refrigerator rather than a tightly corked bottle.
- Three handfuls of hopsRoughly 1 oz of dried hop flowers to the gallon. Any bittering variety works; the hops are there for their antibacterial effect on lactic bacteria as much as for flavour, which is what the closing promise about sour bread refers to.
- Cup measuresA teacup in nineteenth-century American books is usually reckoned at somewhere between half a cup and three-quarters of a cup; a coffee cup at about a full cup, near enough 8 fl oz. The salt is given as a plain half cup. Treat the sugar figure as approximate.
- That much salt is deliberateHalf a cup of salt in a gallon reads like an error but works as a preservative, holding the culture back between bakings.
- "One cup of good yeast"The seed. Traditionally a cup held back from the last batch; a first batch can be started with a packet of commercial yeast, though the character will settle over successive generations.
- Stirring until it thickensBoiling hop liquor poured over grated raw potato gelatinises the starch, so the mixture goes from watery to a loose starch paste. Keep stirring or the potato sets into lumps.
- Cool before seedingAdd the seed yeast at blood heat or below, around 100F. Poured in hot it will simply be killed and the batch will spoil rather than ferment.
- How long it really keeps"A long time" meant a cold cellar and frequent use. Refrigerated, expect two to three weeks of reliable leavening; a sharp acetone or vinegar smell, or mould on the surface, means start again.
- Yield and rising timeAbout a gallon, which at one coffee cup per six loaves is seed for a good many bakings. Dough raised with a liquid yeast of this kind is slow — plan on several hours per rise, not one.
Before compressed and dried yeast could be bought reliably, households kept a yeast of their own going, and community cookbooks of the period carry several versions — potato yeast, hop yeast, salt-rising, milk yeast — each with a contributor's name attached, as this one carries Mrs. Packard's. Hops were the standard insurance: brewers had long known from experience that hops kept a ferment from souring, and the closing line here, that housekeepers "need not fear having sour bread," is the selling point of the formula. Potato supplied starch that the yeast could work on and gave the mixture body so it held its culture between bakings. Commercial compressed yeast was spreading through American cities in this period and is generally credited with pushing recipes like this one out of the home kitchen, though rural households kept their crocks going a good deal longer.