Nutritional yeast flakes vs. instant yeast (plus note on home-made breads)

[Guest guest]

Cool page that Diane provided a link for, at:

http://www.foodsubs.com/LeavenYeast.html

 

However, they left out " wild " yeast, which is in the air all around us, more

concentrated in baker's homes than non-baker's homes, and which is attracted

to baker's implements like earthenware bowls, as opposed to, say, stainless

steel ones.

 

One of the major traditional French breads is called " pain au levain "

( " levain " is translated as " leaven " - to rise). This bread, which is more

involved than ordinary breadmaking recipes, involves only a tiny pinch of

commercial yeast (less than 1/16th of a teaspoon) at the outset, and then

the wild yeast in the air takes over the job. It's fun to try out and

similar in some ways to sourdough breads -- you build a " chef " over four

days or so, with daily additions of flour and water (no more yeast after the

initial pinch). You then extract the amount you need (not all) from the

chef to make your " starter " , then add more flour and water to the chef, and

refrigerate it with a tight-fitting lid for as long as a week. If you bake

every week, you'll never need commercial yeast of any kind again, and the

chef improves with age (some chefs have been shared for years; even decades

by some accounts!). And if you don't bake that week, you can discard a

portion of the chef and add a bit more flour and water to replace it, and

refrigerate for another week which is as long as the yeast cells will remain

active and alive.

 

Anyway, I've gone a bit off track and will leave this for now (time to get

my 8-yr old boy into bed!)

 

If you don't read French, there is the book " Bread Alone " by Daniel Leader,

which offers some of the great traditional French 'pain au levain'

recipes -- the breads with beautiful crusts and fabulous flavour that will

make you never, ever want to buy a commercially produced loaf of bread

again!

 

all the good things,

Richard Menec

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