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Flour and Water Yeast

A yeast made by fermenting a flour and water paste, then boiled with sugar and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,373 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Flour and Water Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the starter

  1. Mix wheat flour with water to form a thick, smooth paste.

  2. Cover with a doubled cloth or flannel.

  3. Let it sit in a warm place for 1-2 days until bubbly and slightly fragrant.

  4. Use immediately.

Make the yeast

  1. Shape into thin cakes and dry.

  2. In a pot, combine raw sugar and coarse sea salt with cold water and bring to a boil.

  3. Stir in flour gradually as the water heats.

  4. Boil for 1 hour.

  5. Remove from heat.

  6. Let cool before bottling.

  7. Use ½ pint of this yeast to raise 9 lbs of flour.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

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

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Wheat + sugartop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,071 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Wheat flour
Feeds the wild microbes in the paste and forms the body of the starter and yeast.
Raw sugar
Provides sugar for the microbes to feed on, driving fermentation and gas production.
Coarse sea salt
Controls fermentation pace and adds flavor to the finished yeast.

The step that matters

Let the starter sit warm until bubbly. Fermentation depends on warmth and time; too cool and the paste stays inactive, so it will not leaven bread. Look for bubbles and a slight fragrance before using.

“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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