a wild yeast trap

I've made sour dough before, everyone knows how you have to make the starter a week before you want bread. if your really lucky you have a starter that was made 100 years ago by your great grandmother. but for those of us that aren't that lucky. we make ours the week before and hope for the best.

so i made the traditional starter and a week later i made the bread. with out any satisfaction it tasted like white bread. so to the web i went looking for a different recipe; sure as the day is long that the recipe was the problem. Low and behold, San Francisco sour dough with the native wild yeast. so i thought to my self how do i get a hold of some of that wild yeast from my neck of the woods?

so back to the web i go looking for some way to collect, harvest, or trap some wild yeast that i was sure now was the problem to my tasteless dilemma.

So here is my trap, all you need is equal parts flour and water, i used a table spoon. and an open window. the really great part is that the wild beasts are all around and all you have to do is provide some food and they come running. Wait 8 hours add another table spoon of each and stir. wait another 8 hours add an 1/4 cup of each wait 8 more hours. Keep up this way until you have enough starter for your recipe. and the starter starts to smell sour. You don't have to worry about anything bad getting into your starter because the wild yeast make it uninhabitable for any thing else to live.


So after my 3 additions and 24 hours i had starter. I mixed it with the first so i had enough for my recipe and I'm pleasantly surprised there is a difference, a slightly more sour result. Not maybe it's because of the wild yeast or the age of the first starter. But I'm willing to keep experimenting to find out. I love sour dough. I've only had good sour dough once before but I'll never forget it and I've been trying to hunt down a good loaf for years. with out any success, so now I'm just going to make it myself.