Natural Starter

One of the things that makes some artisan breads so interesting and complex is that they use a natural yeast starter.

Let's back-up for a second and do a little Yeast 101:  Yeast is a microscopic organism that acts on sugars and changes them in carbon dioxide gas and alcohol.  It is the release of gas that causes the leavening of bread.  You can purchase commercial produced yeast, but yeast is all around us, all the time.  It is possible to use wild yeast to leaven bread.  This is done, at the most basic level, by mixing flour with water and letting it sit for several days.

It is recommended, when you make a starter, to use whole grain rye.  Rye is a good environment for wild yeast, so starters made will whole grain rye (the yeast live on the outside of the grain) are more likely to be successful.  I, however, wanted to make a gluten free starter, and rye has gluten, of course!  I decided to go with teff flour.  Teff is the grain that is used in an Ethiopian flat bread called injera.  While some recipes have you add yeast, traditionally it is just left to ferment on it's own, so I figured teff must be a good source of wild yeast.

All I did was mix teff flour with water until it had made kind of a dough.

I decided to just cover it with cheese cloth, so nothing creepy would fall in, but all my yeasty friends would feel welcome to come in and cozy up.

Come on in, my little friends.  I have simple sugars for you!

Hopefully, in a couple days, this will start to get bubbly.  Check back in a few days!