Yeast Starter
11:25 PM - November 07, 2005
I am a child of the Wonder Bread generation. I don't think I even tasted wheat bread until high school. The 80s and 90s were all about convenience food. I was child number three and Mom spent too much of her time fretting over my two older brothers who were finishing college and starting their lives too worry about all of her dreams of raising a that "perfect" daughter.
Of course in the meantime I was running around with the boys…always the tomboy. I never looked good in dance shoes anyway. Let's face it, part of having a child is reliving your own childhood and the parts of my mother's childhood that were meaningful to her involved bread baking and tap shoes. When she became ill with cancer she realized that she had never even taught me how to bake a loaf of bread. How could she be facing death when her daughter didn't even know how to bake bread? So with absolute seriousness she pulled out the rolling pin and taught me how to make the most basic bread using yeast packets from the grocery store and allowing time for kneading and rising. I have never made a loaf that way since.
I like bread but I never again had interest in making it until college when my husband bought his first bread machine and we exalted in the joys of fresh bread. We tried different recipes that we found in a bread-maker cookbook. My husband has always been a more active cook than I have and in our first years of marriage I might have starved to death had it not been for his cooking.
Along the way I have heard people talk about sourdough starters that are kept in the freezer and used for years to make delicious bread, but never in all of my "bread" education did I hear anything about making European breads that involve boiling potatoes. That is, until I started researching my grandmother's recipe for stollen.
When I started this project I didn't realize that I had a living part of history on my hands. I have never been interested in history (family or otherwise). My mother watched hours of World War II documentaries on the History channel. I remember asking if we could please skip Hitler before bedtime. Funny enough I use the same words with my husband on a regular basis, as he too is enamored with Hitler documentaries. Anyway, I am getting off the subject. The subject as you may have guessed is bread. More importantly, it is Stollen. Since the question was raised about Stollen on the comments from my last post I thought it would be a good place to start.
The original recipe called for a starter and yeast cakes and 7lbs of flour. I am sure that many of you would be shocked to know that I have problems with organization…okay if you have seen my house you already know how I struggle. In any case, I have misplaced the first Stollen recipe, but have found a recipe for Christmas Stollen. I will have the actual recipe card scanned and posted later on this week. This recipe actually seems like something I might be able to reproduce.
In the meantime I wanted to post my grandmother's basic yeast starter. I found an interesting book at the library called English Bread and Yeast Cookery written by Elizabeth David. In this book there are several references made to cooks making their own yeast using boiled potatoes. Some of my older readers may remember bread yeast that is bought fresh or frozen. I have only seen the dried type in paper packets or jars. From what I can gather my grandmother used boiled potatoes in this starter to help create more active living yeast that would make tastier bread. The Joy of Cooking cookbook states "the best quality European breads are made by the indirect method, using sponges or starters to extend fermentation." However nowhere in the Joy of Cooking does it mention using potato or potato mash to create a starter. It appears most of my grandmother's breads use an indirect method using potato.
Below you will find the recipe for her basic starter, which is the beginning of many of her bread recipes including Christmas Stollen.
(Starter for bread)
2 yeast cakes (dry)
2 tbs. Sugar
1 quart lukewarm water (cook one potato done. Mash into lukewarm water.)
set overnight
drain off a pint, add water, 2 tbs. Sugar & set in a cold place. Always add water & 2 tbs. Sugar and set in a cold place. Always add water & sugar the night before you intend to use it & drain off half next morning before mixing sponge.
