Home-Made Yeast

Ingredients

• six large potatoes
• three pints of water
• a handful of hops
• half a cup of sugar
• half a tablespoonful of ginger
• two of salt
• a teacupful of yeast

Method

1. 1

   Boil potatoes with hops, drain, and mix with flour to make a thin batter.

2. 2

   Scald it, then add mashed potatoes, sugar, ginger, salt, and yeast.

3. 3

   Let rise, then store in a cool place.

Nutrition per serving

Estimated from matched ingredients across 32 servings.

As published

This recipe was extracted from Original White House Cookbook (1887) by Hugo Ziemann, F. L. Gillette, Hugo Zimmerman, mrs gillette, page 151. The excerpt below is the record exactly as published.

Home-made yeast is generally preferred to any other. Compressed yeast, as now sold in most grocery stores, makes fine light, sweet bread, and is a much quicker process, and can always be had fresh, being made fresh every day. WHEAT BREAD. Sift the flour into a large bread-pan or bowl ; make a hole in the mid- dle of it, and pour in the yeast in the ratio of half a teacupful of yeast to two quarts of flour ; stir the yeast lightly, then pour in your “ wetting,” either milk or water, as you choose, — which use warm in winter and cold in summer ; if you use water as “wetting,” dissolve in it a bit of butter of the size of an egg, — if you use milk, no butter is necessary ; stir in the “wetting” very lightly, but do not mix all the flour into it; then cover the pan with a thick blanket or towel, and set it, in winter, in a warm place to rise, — this is called 'putting the bread in s'pongeR In summer the bread should not be wet over night. In the morning add a teaspoonful of salt and mix all the flour in the pan with the sponge, kneading it well ; then let it stand two hours or more until it has risen quite light ; then remove the dough to the molding-board and mold it for a long time, cut- ting it in pieces and molding them together again and again, until the dough is elastic under the pressure of your hand, using as little flour as possible ; then make it into loaves, put the loaves into baking-tins. The loaves should come half-way up the pan, and they should be allowed to rise until the bulk is doubled. When the loaves are ready to put into the oven, the oven should be ready to receive them. It should be hot enough to brown a teaspoonful of flour in five minutes. The heat should be greater at the bottom than at the top of the oven, and the fire so arranged as to give sufficient strength of heat through the baking without being replenished. Let them stand ten or fifteen minutes, prick them three or four times with a fork, bake in a quick oven from forty-five to sixty minutes. If these directions are followed, you will obtain sweet, tender and wholesome bread. If by any mistake the dough becomes sour before you are ready to bake it, you can rectify it by adding a little dry supercarbon- ate of soda, molding the dough a long time to distribute the soda equally throughout the mass. All bread is better, if naturally sweet, without the soda ; but sour bread you should never eat, if you desire good health. Keep well covered in a tin box or large stone crock, which should be BREAD. 229 wiped out everyday or two, and scalded and dried thoroughly in the sun once a week. COMPRESSED YEAST BREAD. Use for two loaves of bread three quarts of sifted flour, nearly a quart of warm water, a level tablespoonful of salt and an ounce of compressed I yeast. Dissolve the yeast in a pint of lukewarm water; then stir into it enough flour to make a thick batter. Cover the bowl containing the bat- ter or sponge with a thick folded cloth and set it in a warm place to rise; if the temperature of heat is properly attended to, the sponge will be foamy and light in half an hour. Now stir into this sponge the salt dis- solved in a little warm water, add the rest of the flour and sufficient warm water to make the dough stiff enough to knead; then knead it from flve to ten minqtes, divide'it into loaves, knead again each loaf and put them into buttered baking tins; cover them with a double thick cloth and set again in a warm place to rise twice their height, then bake the same as any bread; This bread has the advantage of that made of home-made yeast as it is made inside of three hours, whereas the other requires from twelve to four- teen hours. HOME-MADE YEAST. Boil six large potatoes in three pints of water. Tie a handful of hops in a small muslin bag and boil with the potatoes; when thoroughly cooked drain the water on enough flour to make a thin batter; set this on the stove or range and scald it enough to cook the flour (this makes the yeast keep longer); remove it from the Are and when cool enough, add the pota- toes mashed, also half a cup of sugar, half a tablespoonful of ginger, two of salt

Cook this with the app: pantry check, scaling, and the assistant.