Recipe for Natural Leavening Yeast

Monday's Child left a comment on my post More About Pioneer Yeast and Cinnamon Roll Recipe. She had some trouble with her wild sourdough starter. I'm really no expert, but I love to read, research, and try things out. And I'm blessed with great friends who do the same thing.

I got this recipe from my friend. She uses a natural yeast that is different from Pioneer Yeast. The book she recommends is The Bread Baker's Apprentice. It's not a book I own.... yet. I am interested in trying this type of yeast to see if this type of yeast processes gluten the same way that the Pioneer Yeast does.

She also sent me to this site to read and watch the videos. Although I haven't had time to go through everything yet, I'm looking forward to it once we have the animal situation fixed.

I haven't tried this recipe, but my friend used it to start her yeast and she loves it!

Original Fast Foods

Here's the recipe my friend sent me:

Day 1: 1 cup coarse ground or dark rye; 1/2 cup unsweetened pineapple juice (I bought frozen concentrate). Make it into a ball, using your hands. Press it down into a glass beaker (canning jar) and put tape on the side so you can see if it rises at all. (Probably won't on the first day.) Cover with plastic wrap and leave at room temp for 24 hrs.

Day 2: 1/2 cup of the rye; 1/4 cup pineapple juice. Same procedure.

Day 3: 1 cup unbleached high gluten or bread flour; 1/2 cup room temp water. Look for maybe a 50% rise. May smell fermented. Don't worry. Discard half of the starter and mix the remaining half with the day three ingredients. Cover with plastic and leave at room temp for 24 hours.

Day 4: 1 cup bread flour; 1/2 cup water at room temp. Sponge should have doubled in size; more is better. If still sluggish and hasn't doubled, allow to sit another 12 to 24 hours. Otherwise, discard half and add the day 4 ingredients. Cover and ferment until it doubles in size. May take 12-24 hours. Okay if it triples, but it will not be able to sustain that much of a rise, so expect it to fall.

Barm: 1 cup seed culture (above); 2 cups water at room temp.; 3 1/2 cups bread flour. Make sure all flour is hydrated and seed culture is evenly spread through the mixture. Put in clean glass or plastic container and put tape on side to measure rise. Allow to ferment for 6 hours or until bubbly. He says not to breathe in the fumes if the plastic inflates with gasses from the fermentation. Mine didn't inflate. Replace cover and refrigerate over night and you can use it the next day. It is potent for three days and then needs to be refreshed.

Refresh: Use or toss 1/2 and then add enough flour and water to AT LEAST double the total amount of barm. If you have a cup left make sure you double it to 2 cups, or even more.

You can use the barm you would be tossing out to make sourdough crackers. Google it. They taste great. My kids love them.

Thanks for your comments. I love hearing from you.

More About Pioneer Yeast and Cinnamon Roll Recipe

I've gained about 4lbs this week because I've been experimenting with bread. Since I haven't eaten wheat in about 10 years, it has been a wonderful treat for me!

Sheepy's been experimenting, too. Her first loaves were a huge success. Light and fluffy and wonderful! The next four batches were bricks. Even the goats wouldn't eat them.

I had a big 'breakthrough' last Sunday when I promised Vet2Be I would make him rolls.... and I found out I had no store-bought yeast. All I had was the pioneer yeast sitting on the counter.

Since I had already mixed the liquids (eggs, buttermilk, water, sugar, and butter) I dumped in the pioneer yeast and then added the four.

Surprise! About 2 hours later it had risen enough to look like bread!

Yesterday I started some Cinnamon Rolls to bring to choir rehearsal on Sunday. I told Sheepy I would 'document the process' and post about it so she could see exactly what I do. (Being married to a scientist means I've learned to keep a lab notebook, complete with photos! It's now called a 'blog'.)

Not everyone uses a potato to proof the yeast, but we love potato bread, so that's what I do. This post includes the recipe, but realize that I don't use it 'by the book'. I often add a little more or a little less of liquid or flour to get the right consistency.

One potato diced in about 3/4 cup of water. Cook until potatoes are soft.

I added enough water to make about 1 cup, and then blended the potatoes.

Pioneer yeast ready to use in cinnamon rolls.

Here's where I did something 'wrong', but the cinnamon rolls turned out great anyway. I should have added just the yeast start, honey, and potatoes, then let it sit for a few hours. But I got distracted and added the egg and buttermilk, too.

I added about 1/2 cup buttermilk, 1 duck egg, 2 Tbls of butter, 2 Tbls of honey, and the potato puree. My breadmaker is then turned OFF, it doesn't go through a cycle at this point. I only let it stir the yeast into the rest of the liquids. You can do this in a mixer, too. I like my breadmaker, so that's what I use.
This photo was taken at 11:30 AM.

Let it sit and proof for about 2-4 hours. Whenever you get back to it is fine. This is what it looked like after two hours. I knew I wasn't ready to make bread yet, so I let this sit in the breadmaker until about 9:30 pm.

In this batch I used 4 cups of white flour and 1 cup of wheat flour. Turn on the breadmaker (or use a mixer) and knead for a minimum of 10 minutes. The dough is ready when it is smooth and elastic.

At this point I turn the breadmaker off. I really only use the breadmaker to mix and knead the dough. It does a good job, it's easy to clean, and if I forget about the dough it doesn't matter.

Sorry, I forgot to take a picture of the dough when it was done kneading.... sometimes I get on auto-pilot and just move onto the next step!

At this point I rolled my dough into a rectangle to make cinnamon rolls, but you could put it in a greased loaf pan, spread shortening on the top of the loaf, then set it to rise all night.

Spread the dough with softened butter, sprinkle on 3/4 cup brown sugar mixed with about 2-3 teaspoons of cinnamon.

Roll the long edge up.

Slice and place on a jelly roll pan that has parchment paper on the bottom. You can grease the pan if you prefer.

Put it in the oven overnight. I didn't turn the oven light on.

I completely forgot to take a photo of the cinnamon rolls in the morning before I put them in the oven. They were all raised and looked beautiful!

And then I forgot to take a photo of what they looked like coming out of the oven.

When I did remember to take a photo, the rolls were half gone!

This link has some good information about natural leavening. Cooking E-Z. However, I received a start from someone else instead of starting it from the yeast floating around in the air as discussed in the link.

This site is helpful, too, The Bread Geek blog. Since she one of the authors on the upcoming book called, The Art of Baking with Natural Yeast, it isn't overly helpful. 

I'm anxiously awaiting the book The Art of Baking with Natural Yeast by Caleb Warnock and Melissa Richardson. Caleb is the person I got my start from. I've pre-ordered the book because the author sites his sources of studies that have been done by the CDC and different universities that show that rapid-rise (instant) yeast processes the gluten differently than traditional (pioneer or natural) yeasts.

In the meantime I wanted more information on working with this old-style yeast. I thought that since this is a 200 year old strain of yeast, it would be a great idea to read an old cookbook from the 1800's.

My copy of Housekeeping in Old Virginia, originally published in 1979. Mine is a 1965 copy of the original.

You can find Housekeeping in Old Virginia free online at Internet Archives here.


The first chapter was titled, "Bread". It had the most helpful information I found on working with this type of yeast and recipes for bread, pancakes, waffles, rolls.... you name it.

After reading the first chapter I realized that starting my yeast with potatoes and proofing it is very similar to what cooks did 130+ years ago. No wonder my accident last Sunday ended up being a success!

The author also taught, "knead the dough for 30 minutes by the clock." This dough needs more kneading than the bread made from rapid-rise (or instant) yeast.

Knowing those two things have made my pioneer yeast bread turn out nicely every day this past week.

Please leave me a message if you've used natural leavening or pioneer yeast! I would love to learn from your successes!

Feeding the Yeast

I had to feed the natural yeast I got last week. It seemed to do really well. I haven't done anything with it yet... except feed it.

This is what my natural yeast looked like after growing for three days.  It smells really good, kinda sweet with only a very slight hint of sourdough smell.

Time to feed it! Add lukewarm water and stir. I added about 1/2 cup of water.

I added the same amount of fresh ground whole wheat flour. Fresh ground only because I didn't have any from the last batch of wheat I ground.

This is about the same thickness as the first batch that Mr. Warnock  mixed up for me. The jar is still a little less than half full of yeast.... or yeast mixture..... or whatever you call it.

This is about 1 hour after I fed the yeast. It has increased in bulk by a little less than half. It's bubbly and looks just like it's supposed to, as far as I can tell.

So far the yeast seems to be alive and well and growing. My first recipe will be pancakes since that seems the easiest to start with.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Natural Yeast?

Sheepy sent me a link to a radio program that talked about natural yeast, something I've never heard of before. (Self-Reliant Living by Preparedness Radio hopefully the link will be active for a little while. I've heard that the owners of the site don't always leave it up for free, so download the program if you don't have 90 minutes to listen to it.)

Sheepy knows I can't eat wheat because I'm gluten intolerant, but there are some people like me who can eat bread made with this kind of yeast.

It sounded so interesting that I listened to the 90 minute program the next day.

By that evening I had contacted the author of the book and picked up a natural yeast start. It's sitting on my counter growing. Apparently this strain of yeast is about 200 years old. That's old.

This is what it looks like this morning.

Nice and bubbly, just like it is supposed to look.

Natural yeast is very different from quick-rise yeasts that you buy in the grocery store. The way it acts on wheat is different, too. Apparently there have a been a few university studies done that show that this breads made with this type of yeast do an amazing job controlling your glycemic index. That's really important to Sheepy since her hubby has diabetes.

Caleb Warnock has a blog here. He doesn't talk much about natural yeast on his blog, but he has some good ideas about gardening and being more self reliant. He's also an authro and hosts writing workshops and classes in our area. Nice guy, too!

I bought a copy of his book from him last night, too, which he graciously signed. It's called the Forgotten Skills of Self-Sufficiency. It's a great introduction to self-sufficiency skills, it doesn't go into too much depth, but gives some good ideas on how to begin to grow gardens, keep chickens, and use natural yeast.

I haven't explored the Original Fast Foods site much at all, but Mr. Warnock gives their site as a reference in his book. The link to a discussion about the history of quick rise yeast can be found here.

For the next few days I'll leave my start on the counter, feed it, and watch it grow. If I can get a little more comfortable with the whole idea of using 1 1/2 cups of yeast starter in a batch of bread, then I'll give it a try next week and let you know how it goes.

Sheepy tried it. Her first batch of bread was great! But the next four batches went to the chickens (sad day!) So my job is to give this stuff a try and keep a 'lab notebook' (aka blog) to chronicle the successes and failures of using it.

Here is a video I found about starting your own yeast from raisins:


Sheepy told me she found a site somewhere on the internet that showed a woman who made all sorts of bread from different fruit starts. In the interview listed above Mr. Warnock mentions that the white-ish film on the outside of grapes and other fruits is yeast, so it makes sense (sort of) that you can grow yeast starts from fruit. Here's a blog I found that seems to show the process Sheepy was telling me about. Bread and Original Yeast. I've got alot of exploring and reading to do on that site!

If you've used this type of starter, please comment below and share some links! I'm sure there are great sites tucked in hidden spots on the internet that I haven't found yet.