My Mom passed away earlier this year and so when time to make Christmas dinner came around, it wasn't going to be the same without Mom and her homemade yeast rolls.

Unfortunately, Mom's recipe was totally memorized, so it went with her. I found a recipe that didn't seem too difficult so I summoned up lots of courage and decided to try making yeast rolls from scratch for Christmas dinner. Thankfully, the outcome was edible, but they weren't nearly as fluffy or tasty as Mom's usually were.

I don't think I'm quite ready to tackle making my own yeast nor do I think I'll be doing this often enough to get that hardcore about it (we don't typically eat a lot of bread around our house) but now that I'm past being quite so intimidated by the whole process, I would like to find a recipe that'd yield a more worthwhile result. Could you recommend a good recipe for making reasonably simple yeast rolls?

Ok, proper starter can take up to 12 days to create.

1)1/2 cup flour, 1/2 cup water. mix. Let sit for about 24 hours. Incidentally, rye flour makes an excellent first flour for making a starter from scratch for some reason.

2) begin discarding half of the starter, then replacing the discarded amount with the same 1/2 cup flour and 1/2 cup water. do this every 8 or 12 hours over about 5 or 6 days.

It will get very bubbly. When you smell it it may give off scent of fresh paint, alcohol, plaster, or other smells, which will change as the starter gets more mature over the course of the week. This is normal and due to the byproducts of the metabolism of the starter. If it smells *BAD* then it is going off. Which has never happened to me.

Once it is able to double its volume in 8 hours, it is strong enough to leaven a loaf of bread and you can use it.

Use half of it for your recipe, and the other half to save in the fridge after refreshing it with flour and water and letting it sit at room temp for several hours.

I have personally never seen a starter turn green or red or whatever, but if it does throw it out.

If it is stored in the fridge for months and months it may get a darkish layer on top, which you can scrape off it.

Many bakers actually start a new starter every 6 months or so, as they prefer the newer starter to older ones. So keeping one going for 15 years is not necessary, even if might be fun.

You know, I just don't think I'm "there" yet Carrie, but this is certainly inspirational. I snag the bulk yeast from Costco or Sam's as the person above recommended. It's interesting you mentioned the old gold miners though. So, they actually grabbed their yeast out of the air to start theirs as well? OK, I've reached the point of rambling. I just wanted to say congratulations on an interesting article.

$5 per month for yeast is an outrageous amount of money, unless you're making a ton of bread. I make all the bread that two adults can eat, plus sell a few loaves on the side, and I use less than $3 worth of yeast per year!

Those little packages of yeast are ridiculously expensive compared to bulk yeast, either instant or active dry. I buy it in bulk, store it in the freezer, and a $3 bag (about a pound) will last me for about 18 months. No need to worry about it losing potency when it's stored in the freezer.

I won't argue the qualities of sourdough bread - it's fantastic. But I've found through experience that sourdough starter is much less predictable and reliable than having a stash of yeast in the freezer. At bulk prices, I think that reliability and consistency is *well* worth the expense.

Have you ever made the friendship sourdough bread from the Omish?  It's delicious.  They call it friendship bread, because each time someone makes it they end up making 4 starter loaves that can be saved or given to friends to continue the process of making bread.  I have only ever made it from a ziplock bag full of 'starter' stuff, so I'm not sure if it contains yeast at first or if it just makes it's own.  But even if you have to buy yeast to make the first batch, subsequent loaves don't require more yeast, so you could theoretically go on forever just adding milk and sugar to your starters!

Just a note about buying "historical" starter:
As the culture grows, it will gradually become completely local, as yeast and bacteria from the air where you live will out-compete the foreign ones from the original starter. So (unless you live in San Francisco), you won't be making San Francisco sourdough after the first few loaves.

A friend, who is a baker, brought back a yeast/sourdough culture from a well-known Parisian bakery (Poilane, I think). He is still using the "offspring" of that culture, but he said that over time it has changed. The change was fairly rapid at first, and it's pretty stable now, years later. Apparently the yeast & bacteria in the original culture either adapted to his conditions or (more likely, imho) they were gradually replaced by local strains.

Buying a culture still gets you past the possible "pink and green" phase, and that in itself might be worth it.

I highly recommend the King Arthur Cookbook to learn about sourdough. There’s a day-by-day instruction section on starting a sourdough. Sourdough for dummies if you will. Also, the recipes are suburb. I use the recipe for sourdough waffles when I feed the starter that way nothing goes to waste.

As we have become more cautious in my family over the things we eat, eating non processed foods and leaning more to all natural things, I noticed the yeast that we use to make our bread... small round uniform circles, not exactley "natural" U could never figure out how they were made either. So I have been scratching my head wondering how can I do this without using that stuff? Here it is! Very Interesting, the answer was in my backyard!

As I understand the situation, there are three kinds of yeast I might be interested in raising:

* baker's yeast, which you describe here. This yeast produces abundant CO2, needed to cause bread to rise;

* brewer's yeast, used for making beer, which produces Ethanol up to about 6%, at which point the yeast is killed by its own waste (the Ethanol);

* wine yeast, used for making wine, which thrives producing Ethanol up to 20%. This is quite expensive;

Do you know if brewer's or wine yeast can be similarly maintained?

Thanks. I love Wisebread!