Yeast...

[Dedicated_Dad]

I'm thinking of long-term food storage, as I've posted. One of my worries is how to turn flour and etc. into bread - where to get yeast?

We had a crock of sourdough starter on the counter through most of my childhood - I made biscuits (along with dinner) most nights from the time I could stand on a chair and reach the stove. Naturally I've totally forgotten how to do it now...

Anyway, I don't think storing packets of yeast in mylar bags in buckets with oxygen absorbers is likely to yield any useable yeast 1,3,5,10 or 20 years from now, so I started looking for sourdough recipes. I figured I'll print them off (along with other recipes and useful info) and put one in each bucket before sealing.

My current plan is for each bucket to have a mix of stuff - hopefully a week's worth of rice, beans, flour, etc - all packed in ziplocks then sealed inside mylar with oxygen absorbers. I'm hoping to be able to have most ingredients measured so (for example) there's enough of everything needed for 7 loaves of bread, etc.

Thing is, all the sourdough started recipes I've been able to find call for yeast, organic grapes, or some other thing I'm not likely to have around in the sort of situaiton that would cause me to open one of these buckets, so...

Am I wrong about the yeast? Will it keep in the buckets without oxygen for years?

If not, does anyone have a recipe for "wild yeast" sourdough starter that could be made with flour/sugar/etc - stuff that will be in my buckets?

OTOH, if I made and dried some sourdough starter now, would it be likely to be viable if reconstituted after a number of years in the bucket?

All input appreciate - thanks much for your time!!

DD

[Fivetoes]

Put the packets of dry yeast in your bucket and pull it out and replace when the expiration date is coming up. Or, make unleavened bread or use baking powder.
My sister once made a try at domesticating her own yeast, basically put out a sourdough starter and waited to see what yeast took over. It was a long process but at the end she ended up with some pretty good bread. Most wild fruits have yeast on it, I don't know about it's baking ability tho.

[Darrell]

Baking powder has a limited shelf life. Baking soda, somewhat less so.

I saw Alton Brown or someone on the Food Network talk about sourdough recently, they covered making your own starter, basically catching whatever the local yeastie bugs are. If you can get a starter from grapes, I'd wonder if you could from raisins. Raisins might be a good thing to put in your SHTF cans, anyway.

Here's one recipe for your own wild yeast starter:

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/233

If you just enter "making sourdough starter" in your search engine all sorts of recipes come up.

[HTRN]

Yeast, as far as beer is concerned, can be repitched a number of times(I've heard of Commercial brewers doing it 20 or more times), but they have the equipment to keep wild strains from entering into it, homebrewers not so much - most go by the five time rule when capturing yeast from the trub...


HTRN

[Dedicated_Dad]

... Here's one recipe for your own wild yeast starter:

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/233

If you just enter "making sourdough starter" in your search engine all sorts of recipes come up.

I did exactly that, and had seen that one, but the "pineapple juice" put me off -- I was hoping to be able to get by without needing such frivolities... As I understand it, the purpose of the juice is to change the PH to make things hospitable for yeast but not for fungi, etc... I was hoping to find some recipe for "wild" starter that wouldn't need anything other than sugar, flour, water, etc - stuff I'm planning to pack.

OTOH, one of the little 4-oz. juice cans could easily be tossed in the bucket, and since it won't be drank but used to grow beasties it would probably do just fine for that purpose 10 or more years from now...

Likewise, I guess it won't be too hard to keep a few cans of pineapple around, though it's just occurred to me that I can do something else: I'll just test the PH of some pineapple juice and add it to my info-pack... If all else fails I could use a vitamin-c (citric acid) pill or some vinegar to accomplish the same thing...

DD

[Aglifter]

Grapes normally have yeast "must" on them -- they're the source of the yeast to ferment wine. I wonder if yeast could be held longer in beer?

[workinwifdakids]

Regarding sourdough bread, Boudin Bakery in San Francisco, CA has been using the same sourdough starter they made up in 1849. On the positive side, you'll be making Frisco Burgers until at least 150 years after the apocalypse. On the negative side, you need to use it to make bread on a fairly consistent basis, and it has a modest learning curve because of ingredient variables affected by temperature and humidity.

Now, you mentioned yeast, and Fivetoes wisely mentioned simply switching out yeast upon expiration date. That's a good idea which will be increased by A) vacuum sealing it, and B) storing it in a freezer. It will keep in that frozen state for FIVE years. Now, obviously the end of the world doesn't come with electricity, but at point of thaw it will keep for up to one year more, assuming a dark cool place. (Under 70F degrees is optimal.) You would then be able to use this yeast as 'starter' kits that will prolong your bread supply for a long while. My recommendation would be to buy a batch and throw it in the freezer every year; in five years, throw away the first one, and then add one & throw away one every year afterward.

Now, one thing no one's mentioned is "quick bread." Quick bread simply means bread that's been leavened by chemical means rather than biological (i.e., yeast). So, what are some chemical leaveners?

Cream of Tartar is one, baking soda is another, and baking powder another. Cream of tartar is a byproduct of wine production, so if you make homemade wine you have the added benefit of leavened bread.

Most resources say the shelf life of baking soda is 3 years, but also say the life is INDEFINITE if kept vacuum-sealed, and preferably cooled. Now, here's an interesting note for you: you can test your baking soda by putting a small amount of vinegar (2 tbs?) into a bit of baking soda (1/4 tsp?) and if it fizzes, you are good to go. So, every time you make a vacuum-sealed bit of baking soda, make a mini-me sidecar of it so you can test it in lieu of testing the big batch. If the li'l bag is good, so's the big batch.

If you have those two, baking powder doesn't matter. Why? Because baking soda + cream of tartar = fast-acting baking powder.

[Lokidude]

Here's another thing to think about with long-term food storage: you're going to want to rotate your food. Even foods that have an obscenely long shelf life should be rotated, simply because for most foods, nutritional value and taste start to decline long before expiration. Put up your food storage by buying extra each time you buy groceries until you have the surplus you feel you need. You then resume buying at your consumption level, eating from your food storage and replacing what you consume. It takes some practice to readjust and learn when you need to restock, but it guarantees fresher food when you DO need it, and less risk of finding expired supplies because somebody missed checking expiration dates. The things you learn in an LDS family...

[Combat Controller]

Seems I am lucky with my allergy to wheat...