How To Make Yeast At Home

With the current pandemic affecting our entire nation, we preppers must learn how to survive without depending on others.

After all, the essence of emergency preparedness is to become independent and self-sufficient.

Going to the grocery store has become a dangerous activity, and we must respect the social distancing recommendations in order to avoid catching the new coronavirus. If you are a prepper, you undoubtedly have a few months’ worth of emergency food storage. However, knowing and replacing staples in the kitchen without having to go to the store is an equal survival skill required for long-term survival and self-sufficiency.

The downside of long-term survival and
bread making is having to make your own yeast and keeping active yeast on hand
at all times. Commercial yeast has a shelf life of 2 years, and once you open
it, you must store it in a cool and dry space. What can we do when the yeast we
bought no longer can be used?

How to make your own yeast

If a trip to the store is out of the
question and if you plan to hunker down for a long, and you’re craving that
heavenly hot loaf of bread or those golden biscuits, what can you do? The only
thing you can, and should do, is to make your own yeast or baking yeast
substitute (if you will).

There are various ways you can make your
own yeast, and you don’t have to be an experienced baker to succeed. Based on
what you have stored in your survival pantry, you can choose the best recipe
listed in this article, the one that fits your needs.

Fruit yeast

Ingredients:

• Grapes or other fruits (such as
  apples, oranges, and raisins, just to name a few). There are many types of
  fruits that enclose natural yeast spores in the skin or peel of the fruit.
• Water. I recommend filtered or
  bottled water since tap water can have a too high chlorine content that will
  eventually kill the yeast.
• 1 cup of whole wheat flour
• Glass jar (32oz or larger)
• Cheesecloth

Instructions:

1. You can use a bunch of grapes, but you
have to avoid washing the grapes since you will wash off the yeast you are
trying to save and grow. Start by steaming the grapes.

2. Crush the grapes by hand and place them
in the glass jar.

3. Cover the jar with cheesecloth and leave
it undisturbed for three days.

4. Check on it from time to time and observe
if the liquid starts bubbling. If that occurs, it means that your yeast is
growing.

5. Strain the liquid and stir in 1 cup with
the whole wheat flour

6. Leave your grape yeast at room
temperature for at least 24 hours

7. Save one cup of the mixture, then add
one cup of flour and a cup of water. Do this for two days. By day three, you
should have a very bubbly starter.

8. Keep feeding it from time to time to
have some ready at hand for your next baking experiments.

You can experiment with various types of
fruit because each starter you make from the fruits will have a different
flavor. There are people using even tomatoes, and you need to find which one
works for you. The advice I can give you is to use homegrown, or even better,
wild fruits since these are not covered with pesticides or wax, like the
store-bought ones.

Sourdough starter

Ingredients:

• Water (filtered or bottled)
• Flour. You can use any type of
  flour you want, but I found out that whole-wheat flour works best.
• Glass jar (32oz or larger) with
  lid

Instructions:

1. On day one, place ¼ cup of warm water
and 6 tablespoons of flour in the glass jar (make sure the jar is clean). It’
better to do this in the morning so that you can check on your starter twelve
hours later.

2. Stir the flour in the water and cover
the jar with the lid.

3. Place the jar in a warm area, and after
12 hours, check the starter for signs of bubbles. Just like any other starter,
you may notice only one or two bubbles at first.

4. If you don’t notice any bubbles, you can
add another ¼ cup of water and 6 tablespoons of flour. Make sure you mix the
starter properly.

5. On day two, check the jar in the morning,
and you should see signs of bubbling. Feed the starter with another ¼ cup of
water and 6 tablespoons of flour. Make sure you also scrape the sides of the
jar so that everything is evenly mixed.

6. Feed the starters again after 12 hours.

7. On day three, remove half of the starter
from the jar to avoid it outgrowing your jar.

8. Since the discarded starter is not
strong enough to be used, you can discard it in your compost bin.

9. Feed the starter following the same
rules as before and feed it again after 12 hours.

10. On days four through seven, the same
routine goes on as you did in days one through three, stir and feed your
starter in the morning and in the evening. However, you will need to remover
some starter from time to time, as there may not be enough room in the jar for
it to grow.

11. At the end of the week, you should see
a lot of bubbling, and the yeast should be rising faster than it did in the
first days.

12. Once the starter is established, you
can store it in the fridge if you don’t plan to cook with it for a few days. To
keep it active, you can feed it twice a day using a 1/8 cup of water and 3
tablespoons of flour twice a day. To keep it in dormant, feed it only twice per
week

Potatoes yeast

Since preppers and homesteaders are growing
potatoes in various types of containers, you should have some at hand all the
time. The starch in potatoes is ideal for making yeast, and this method is the
most popular around the world.

Ingredients:

• 1 Average size potato
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 4 cups of water
• 1-quart glass jar

Instructions:

1. Use a soft brush to rinse the potato to
remove dirt and other impurities. Don’t scrub too much as you may peel away the
skin containing the yeast.

2. Cut the potato into a few pieces and
boil it until cooked through.

3. Drain the water into a container and
save it for later use.

4. Mash the potato and add the sugar and
salt while doing so.

5. Allow the mashed potato to cool at room
temperature.

6. Add the saved water to the potato mash
until the mixture equals one quart and place it in the jar.

7. Cover the jar and place it in a warm
place.

8. Let the mixture sit and ferment for up
to 7 days. With each day you should notice more and more bubbly activity.

How to store your yeast

Making yeast at home is not complicated,
and the main challenge, in my opinion, is to store it properly and transport
it. If you want to have some yeast ready at all times, you have to dry some and
store it for later use. Here is how to do it properly.

If you made any of the starters listed in
this article, or if you made some using your own recipe, take it and spread it
very thinly on a cookie sheet or baking stone. Dehydrate the starter as you
will do with any other food.

For those living in a hot and arid climate,
you can cover the cookie sheet with cheesecloth and let it sit in the sun.

If you plan on using an oven to dry the
yeast, make sure you put it on the lowest temperature. Avoid cooking it as you
will kill the yeast and end up with a useless powder. Even better, use a food
dehydrator if you have one.

Once the yeast is dried (using one of the methods listed above), you can crumble it and store it in airtight containers.  Once packed, you can store it in the fridge or freezer, just like any store-bought yeast.

How to proof-test your yeast

Some folks have trouble figuring out if their
yeast (homemade or store-bought) is still usable after storing it for a few
months. Testing the yeast is quite easy, and here are the steps to follow:

1. Dissolve one teaspoon of sugar in half a
cup of warm water. You can use tap or bottled water. The best temperature to
work it I found it to be between 110°F and 120°F. The best way
to figure out if you got the right temperature is to use your cooking
thermometer.

2. Stir in the water your dry yeast
(homemade or commercial). One ¼ oz. packet of commercial yeast and two
teaspoons for your dried homemade yeast are the recommended quantities.

3. Wait for at least 5 minutes and observe
if the yeast wakes up and starts to rise.

4. After 10 minutes, the mixture should
have a foamy/bubbly top. If that’s the case, your yeast can be used
successfully for baking since you now have active yeast.

Note: To tell if your yeast has risen
enough to be considered good enough for baking, use a measuring cup to test it.
If the foam of the yeast reaches the top of the cup, you can use it for your
baking purposes.  If that’s not the case,
throw it away and test another batch.

Concluding

Making your yeast is recommended if a trip
to the store is not planned in your near future. Making your own will provide
you with an alternative just as good as the store-bought yeast. Learn to make
it at home and play with the various recipes.

You may notice that you might have to use more of your dried yeast for the same amount of bread you are used to making with commercial bough-yeast, but that shouldn’t be a problem. Nothing compares to the smell of fresh-baked bread, and you won’t have to suppress your cravings if you learn to make yeast at home.