Hop Yeast
Ingredients
Directions
Make the hop tea
Boil a large handful of hops in 2 quarts of water until it becomes a strong tea.
Build the starter
Strain the tea into a jar and add 1 pint of flour; stir until very smooth.
Allow the mixture to cool, then add ½ cup of yeast.
Set the jar in a warm place until it becomes light, then seal it tightly.
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
- Hops (in the method)
- Boiled into the tea, they add bitter, aromatic flavor to the starter.
- Flour
- Provides starch that feeds the yeast and gives the starter body and thickness.
- Yeast
- Ferments the sugars and produces gas, which makes the starter rise and become light.
The step that matters
Cooling the mixture before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed or weakened by very hot liquid. Letting the mixture cool first keeps the yeast alive so it can ferment and leaven the starter.
“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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