Tag Archives: Sourdough

Okay, I’ll admit it – I love yeast

The world of beer aficionados is generally divided into two camps; hops heads and malt lovers.  This particular part of the world, the Pacific Northwest,  is chock full of  hop heads and rightly so – Washington State is one of the world’s greatest hop growing regions.  But as much as I enjoy  drinking an over the top Imperial IPA, I’m not a true hop head.  Neither am I a true malt lover – although I can’t image ever turning down a malty Southern Brown Ale.  So where does this leave me – will I forever be lost in this state of limbo? No, for I am a yeast lover.

Yeast is such an under-discussed and unappreciated ingredient – without yeast beer would not exist and the world would be worse for it.  Beer was brewed without hops for centuries and although beer  would not be the same without malted grain, a whole plethora of sugary ingredients are out there just begging to be added into the brewing process, but yeast cannot be replaced or substituted.  Baking Powder just will not do in this situation.

Yeast can be a completely neutral ingredient, imparting almost no flavour at all in its creation of alcohol and carbon dioxide, which is desirable in many beer styles.  On the opposite side, yeast can create esters, and phenols and many other compounds that add a  range of fruit flavours and spicy complexity to beer.  Not only can yeast create flavour, but it can also add mouthfeel and can  draw out or hide the maltiness of certain beers.

The Belgians are masters at controlling spicy, fruity, sour and almost sweet flavours that yeast can create,  Germans have brewing with neutral lager yeast down to a science, the English know how to control malt flavours with yeast, and North Americans have embraced a whole gamut of yeast strains to brew with.  Brewers understand the importance of yeast, but that understanding does not make it to the consumer often enough.

Yeast is a living, breathing organism that is responsible for the creation of beer and I think these creatures deserve a little more attention in the world of beer.  A knowledgeable beer drinker should be able to determine the different hop varieties in a beer and perhaps even the different malts, but I believe only a select few could determine the style of yeast used to ferment the sweet wort into beer.

My obsession with yeast has grown to new heights.  So far I have collected two wild yeast cultures; one for bread and one for brewing my very own authentic West Coast Lambic.  The third yeast culture was harvested from my last homebrew and is essentially an IPA flavoured Wyeast 1968 ESB yeast.  Instead of brewing with this yeast, I think I will try to make pizza dough with the yeast.  Add some heat to the pizza sauce and I would imagine the the pizza would pair perfectly with an IPA – both sharing the same yeast.

Harvested Wyeast ESB Yeast; Wild Yeast for brewing; Wild Sourdough Yeast

Harvested Wyeast ESB Yeast - Wild Yeast for brewing - Wild Sourdough Yeast

Wild Yeast for an Lambic expierament

Wild Yeast for a Lambic experiment

If you only take away one thing from this post I hope it is this:  Yeast creates beer, and without beer where would the world be -  would happiness as we know it exist?

Cheers,

Erik

Balance in the world of beer and bread: Sourdough Bread

The last bit of sourdough bread

The last bit of sourdough bread

The world of beer and bread once again has balance – the sourdough bread trial was a success and it was a good chance to learn about yeast. I didn’t have enough patience to let my sourdough starter sit for long enough to develop a strong sour aroma and flavour but it still tasted pretty good. The sourdough starter I used for the first loaf of bread is still fermenting away so the next batch will have a much more developed sourdough flavour.

I always thought yeast was yeast when it comes to making bread and that it doesn’t matter what kind of yeast is used – I couldn’t have been more wrong. Just like beer, bread gets its flavour and texture from three key ingredients: water, grain and yeast. Standard grocery store bread yeast is designed to ferment quickly and impart very little flavour. This allows bakers to turn out a loaf of bread in 3-4 hours start to finish, but at what cost? Well, there is a hugs cost – lack of flavour and texture!

I am by no means a bread expert, but I have been eating bread for long enough to have a strong opinion. Most grocery store bread tastes like a fluffy cloud of nothing. Just like those who think all beer is supposed to be clean, crisp, light and flavourless – I thought bread was supposed to be light, fluffy, white and flavourless. This needs to change.

By using wild yeast, bread can reach its full glory and become much more than a sandwich holder or sauce sponge. Sourdough bread has a nice chewy texture, a unique flavour and a solid crust that can be achieved without the use of bread improvers/adjuncts. To me the most important part of sourdough is its flavour. Every region of the world has different kinds of yeast and bacteria floating through the air – each one producing a different flavour. My sourdough bread will not taste the same as sourdough from Halifax because of the different yeast used to leaven and flavour the bread.

Good bread is made with patience and good ingredients – many good things cannot be rushed. Generally speaking, water, grain and yeast should be the only ingredients needed to make a diverse range of amazing breads. All I ask of you is one simple thing – if you are enjoying good beer, please also enjoy good bread.

Erik

Beer & Bread

I have been unemployed for three weeks now and have a lot of free time on my hands. With nothing else to do, I started to bake bread – I love bread. So far I have made quite a few loaves of focaccia bread, a loaf of braided French style bread, dinner rolls, croissants and standard white bread. Baking bread is dead simple and incredibly satisfying, plus it will make your house smell amazing. If you haven’t made bread before you must give it a try.

Making bread is very similar to making beer. In ancient Egypt, it is suspected that brewing and bread baking took place is the same place and possibly by the same people. In Egypt, a brew master would also be a baker. After all, the ingredients are almost the same, including grain, yeast and water. Hops are the only ingredient that separates beer from bread; however, hops are a recent addition to brewing and would not have been available to Egyptian brewers.

Baking and brewing, siblings at birth, have sadly been torn apart for thousands of years, and now I, Erik Wolfe, am going to reunite them together again. We shall once again have balance in the world. To do this, I have decided to go back in time and use the same baking & brewing techniques that Egyptians may have used thousands of years ago.

The first bread ever eaten would have been an unleavened flatbread made from an ancient grain such as farro. Without cultivated yeast, which was not available at grocery stores back then, bread will not rise and beer will not ferment. Fortunately, wild yeast is floating in the air all around us just waiting to eat some sugary grain. Early forms of leavened bread and beer would have been fermented with wild yeast. In present day, bread made with wild yeast is called sourdough bread and beer fermented with wild yeast is called a lambic beer. Once a baker or a brewer has fermented their beer or bread, they can cultivate the yeast by continuing to feed grain (sugar) to the yeast, allowing the yeast to be reused again and again. In the form of bread, this is somewhat difficult without refrigeration, but beer is easy to store and is shelf stable at standard room temperatures. By adding beer, instead of water, to grain flour the bread receives a healthy dose of cultivated yeast allowing it to rise and turn into bread.

Beer-Sourdough Bread Starter

Beer-Sourdough Bread Starter - Yum!

To recreate a piece of food history, I made a sourdough starter by adding 1 part wheat flour to 1 part beer, my own home brew of course. The starter has been sitting and being fed grain for three days and is bubbling away nicely smelling just like fermenting beer – only brewers enjoy the smell of fermenting grain. The yeast from the beer will continue to eat the flour creating more yeast. Once it has been a few more days, and I have a good amount of yeast in my starter, I will add it to a standard bread recipe and make bread as usual. I will keep you all posted, including the recipe when it is complete.

Erik