Tracy Norris
Yeast is in demand like never before and is currently hard to find in the supermarket. If you don’t want to do without baking bread and pizza, you can make your own yeast with just three ingredients.
Not only toilet paper, soap, pasta and tomato paste are in short supply in the corona crisis. Yeast is also often out of stock in the supermarket at the moment, regardless of whether it is fresh yeast or dry yeast. But that’s not a bad thing: You can easily make the fermenting and leavening agent yourself with ingredients that you’re guaranteed to have at home.
Make your own yeast: ingredients for wild yeast
- 500 ml lukewarm water (preferably with little lime content)
- 1 tablespoon of sugar
- 2 dried dates (alternative: other dried fruit)
Make yeast yourself: instructions
- Put the lukewarm water with the sugar in a container and seal tightly. Shake the mixture until the sugar dissolves.
- Add the dried fruit and leave in a warm but shady place (25 degrees or warmer is ideal) for a week.
- Shake the yeast water morning and evening. The movement prevents mold from forming. After that, you should carefully open the lid and let the gases escape.
After about a week, the yeast water is ready. This can be recognized by a slightly fermented smell. You can now remove the fruit used.
You can keep your yeast water in the fridge for about two months. It is important that you continue to shake the jar regularly and open it to allow gases to escape.
Tips for making your own yeast
You can make yeast water from dates, dried apricots, raisins or figs. The only important thing is: Use unsulphurised dried fruit.
If you don’t want to sweeten with sugar, you can easily use honey or coconut blossom sugar.
If there are a lot of bubbles forming in the liquid from the homemade yeast, that’s a good sign.
How to use yeast water
When baking, you can simply replace the water you need with yeast water in a one-to-one ratio. If you do without fresh yeast and use homemade yeast, the dough will need significantly more time to rise. It is best to prepare the dough the evening before and let it rest overnight.
Propagating wild yeast
The homemade yeast can be multiplied again. This is much faster than the first preparation of the yeast water:
Use part of the prepared yeast water (approx. 150 to 200 ml) for propagation and add two dates and a tablespoon of sugar.
Pour in 300ml of fresh, lukewarm water and seal the container.
Put the wild yeast back in a warm place and shake the water twice a day. After two to three days the new yeast is ready.
