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Yeast (III)
Mrs. W. C. Harris.
Boil in separate pans one-half cup of hops and two potatoes; strain both liquids boiling hot on a large cup of flour, one spoon of salt, half cup of sugar, and a cup of yeast. Pour it into a jug and set it in a cool place.
This is a liquid bread yeast — a hop-and-potato starter of the kind kept in a stone jug and renewed weekly before packaged yeast was reliable. It is not a batter or a drink; it is the leaven you measure into dough.
- It needs yeast to make yeastThe "cup of yeast" is a live starter from a previous batch, and without it the mixture only ferments by luck from airborne organisms. A cup of any active liquid starter, or a well-fed sourdough thinned to pouring consistency, does the same job.
- The hopsHalf a cup means loose dried hop flowers, a very small weight since whole dried cones are exceedingly light — not pellets, which are far denser and would be harshly bitter at that volume. Hops here are an antiseptic as much as a flavour, discouraging the spoilage bacteria that turn a jug of yeast sour and stringy.
- The potatoesTwo medium potatoes, boiled until soft; the recipe does not say in how much water. Keep the cooking water, since that, with the hop water, is what the recipe means by "both liquids."
- "One spoon of salt"Ambiguous in this book, as elsewhere in the period — most likely a teaspoon rather than a tablespoon. Err on the small side; salt slows fermentation and too much will stall the jug.
- Scald, then coolThe boiling liquids are strained onto the flour to cook it into a smooth paste, which is what keeps the starter thick and stable. The mixture must cool to blood heat before the cup of yeast goes in, or the heat kills it. The recipe assumes you know this; it does not say so.
- The jugA stoneware jug or a wide glass jar, covered but never sealed tight — active yeast produces enough gas to pop a lid or crack a bottle. "A cool place" meant a cellar or larder at roughly 50-60F; a refrigerator works and slows it further.
- Yield and useThe recipe fixes no water quantity, so the yield is not determinate; something in the region of a quart. Reckon roughly half a cup to a cup per large loaf, added as part of the dough's liquid, with a long rise of several hours rather than one. Stir before measuring, since the flour settles.
- Keeping itUse within a week to ten days cold, holding back a cup to start the next jug. If it smells sharply of acetone or cheese, or develops coloured mould or a pink cast, discard it rather than trying to revive it.
Hop yeast was the standard household leaven across nineteenth-century North America, and versions of it appear in many community cookbooks of the era, often several times over with different women's names attached — this book gives three, of which Mrs. Harris's is the third. The logic is straightforward: potato starch and sugar feed the yeast, flour thickens it so it can be measured, and hops keep it from souring in a warm kitchen, the same preservative property that put hops in beer. Compressed fresh yeast was sold commercially from the 1860s and dry granulated yeast cakes were widely advertised by the 1870s, but a cook who baked several loaves a week still kept a jug going and renewed it from itself, which is why these recipes always assume you already have a cup of yeast in hand.