To Make Yeast From Potatoes
Ingredients
Directions
Make the potato base
Boil the potatoes until soft, then skin and mash them smoothly.
Add enough hot water to achieve a consistency similar to beer yeast.
Ferment and store
Stir in the treacle and the yeast while the mixture is still warm.
Keep the mixture warm until fermentation is complete, about 24 hours.
This will yield nearly 1 quart of yeast, which can be stored for up to three months.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- Potatoes
- Provide starch that the yeast ferments, and body to the mixture.
- Treacle
- Supplies sugar that feeds the yeast during fermentation.
- Yeast
- Ferments the sugars, producing carbon dioxide and flavour in the mixture.
The step that matters
Keep the mixture warm while it ferments. Yeast activity slows in cold conditions and speeds up in warmth, so a mixture that cools too early may ferment incompletely. Keeping it warm until fermentation finishes helps the yeast grow and work through the sugars.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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