FRESH YEAST - where to get it, and how to look after it!

A block - 800g - of fresh, baker's yeast

Where can I get fresh yeast?

Here in Taunton, Somerset, I get my fresh yeast from Sainsbury's supermarket - £2.30 for 800g, or 60p for 200g (3p for 10g), or 21p for 50g (4p/10g).

Tesco used to give it away, but has now stopped (however, I was in Tesco in Stevenage over Christmas and the baker gave me over 200g!);

Asda give it away; and,

Morrison's will tell you it's in the chiller cabinets, but it rarely is.

Small bakers where bread is baked on the premises are good places to try - and health food shops often stock it.

Other types of yeast:

HOME-MADE RED TABLE WINE

[The full recipe is further down this post]



9th April 2013
I'm just about to start another batch of this wine - I've still got loads of cherries in the freezer I need to use up to make room for this year's crop. Hard to believe that'll be in about 3 months!

2nd October 2011
I started the wine on Saturday - 6 months since I made my last batch,  this should last me until Christmas at least! - and I put together 25ltrs of stout last night. The wine is pretty much to the recipe, except that I've included 1kg of Morello cherries. I picked 4kg back in July, so I've got plenty left back in the freezer.


4th April 2011 - my latest batch.


The recipe is as below, with 500g mixed frozen morello cherries and blackberries plus a jar of morello cherries. The must had an SG of about 83.

Here's the fermentation after only 12 hours. I used to tie a knot in the bag, but now I just drape it over loosely.

On the 8th of April, 4 days later, I made it up to 5 gallons. I took the bag out, squeezed as much juice out of it as I could, then poured the must into a large bowl. I washed out the fermentation bucket then added a couple of kettles of boiling water to 4kg of sugar and added cold water up to 4 gallons. At this point I washed the nylon bag of fruit in the sugar water, to get as much colour as possible in the wine, squeezed the bag out again and topped it up to 5 gallons. Halfway through adding the water I also added 5 teaspoons of yeast nutrient.


I left it in the bucket for 24 hours, in case the wine fobbed up. Before racking into a cubitainer - sealed with cling film - I took this pic of the fermentation, which I found quite unusual. Half of the surface was covered with bubbles, whilst the other half was a churning - well, maelstrom's perhaps too strong a word, but it was certainly seething with activity.

Now the wine is safe in its cubitainer - I'll check it in about two weeks.

Checked the SG today - and it was 988! Result! The best I have done in several years. It has cleared nicely and tastes great - hard to believe it's only 23 days old!

If I didn't have about 6 litres of my last batch left, I'd happily drink this with a meal.

Equipment:
Large (25L) fermentation bucket
Nylon straining bag
2 metres siphon tube
4 or 5 demijohns
5 solid bungs
25 Litre Fermenter with Large Cap, Bung & Airlock

Basic red table wine

I've been using this recipe for over 30 years. All I ever set out to do was make a drinkable red table wine of about 12%, and this is it.

Ingredients:
250g of dried elderberries
1 kilo tin of red grape concentrate – you can get various types. The one I’m using now is a Rich Red Italian concentrate
500g of one other red(dish) fruit. Morello cherries, blackcurrants, blackberries or whatever you like. If I’ve no fresh fruit I’ll use a large jar of morellos or bilberries.
4kg granulated sugar
Wine yeast

Method:
Place cherries or blackberries in a nylon straining bag and add elderberries. Put the bag in a 5gal fermentation bucket (with lid) and pour a kettle of boiling water over the fruit. Add grape concentrate and sufficient cold or hot water to make a lukewarm liquid up to the one gallon mark. (Rinsing out the concentrate tin as you do so.) This should bring the specific gravity (SG) to around 1080 (80 for short), which is the optimum SG for starting a wine off.

Add the yeast as per instructions on the tub. Mine says to sprinkle 2 teaspoons onto the liquid and stir. Put the lid (tight-fitting) on the bucket and leave it for around 4-5 days in a warm place. (I use a corner in my kitchen year-round.)

When you’re ready to make up to 5 gals, take out the bag of fruit, squeezing some juice out as you do so. Place on a dinner plate or similar. Pour the liquid (must) into another container (I use a 4litre mixing bowl). Rinse out the 5gal bucket and place 2 kg sugar in the bottom. Pour over a jug of boiling water and stir to dissolve. Add two more kg of sugar and another kettle of boiling water. Stir to dissolve then add cold water up to the 4 gallon mark.

If you want to get a bit more colour in your wine, dip the bag of fruit in the sugar water and squeeze it a few times. Take out the fruit and pour the must into the bucket then make up to 5 gallons. Add 5 tsps of yeast nutrient and stir. Replace the lid and leave for 24 hours. (I do this because I’ve found if I put it into straight into the fermentation vessel it sometimes fobs up and makes a right mess!)

Now you need to transfer it (rack it) into the fermentation vessel (which must be airtight). I use an old sherry container which I’ve had for thirty years. I don’t use a ‘bubbler’, instead I cover the hole with cling film held by a rubber band.
It stays in this container for 30 days – in somewhere warm if you’ve got a place – I just leave it in my kitchen under the breakfast bar. After 30 days it should have bottomed out at somewhere between SG990 and 994 and be clearing nicely. At this stage I rack the wine into demijohns – once again sealed with cling film – and 2ltr lemonade bottles. It’s drinkable after about 28 days from the start, with a meal, and it just gets better and better. Just when it reaches its peak, unfortunately, you run out!

I haven’t talked about sterilisation yet:
All equipment used must be sterilised. You need to make a solution of MetaBiSulphite (MBS) and use this to clean everything that comes into contact with your wine. I keep a bottle made up in a cupboard and I make sure that all my empty demijohns, bucket, bottles, etc, are stored with a little of this in the bottom. I also suck a bit through my siphon tube before I use it.

Brilliant teaching session today – despite forgetting the yeast!

Held a Family Learning session at Weston Zoyland Primary School this morning - only the 3^rd session of a course that started back in November. First, the holiday season got in the way, then I had an operation, then last week the school had some advisors in!

Now, however, we should have 3 consecutive weeks to finish off the course.

I always try and cover as many breads as I can in a session, knowing that you can make more than one bread out of a batch of dough. Today we were making a savoury dough, which would make a small pizza and a couple of sizzlers, plus a sweet dough which would make petit pain au chocolat and iced buns.

I generally begin a course by listing my shortcomings as a tutor (I don’t always read my notes; I talk too fast; I let the bread burn whilst enthusiastically going on about bread, etc.) – and I added another one today by forgetting the yeast!

There’s no excuse for this, of course, flour and yeast are a given in any session of mine (apart from when we’re making soda bread, of course!), no matter what other ingredients are necessary!

The day was saved by one of the students coming to my rescue by asking a friend who lived near the school – who, fortunately, had a breadmaking machine – to bring some of her yeast to the school; and ten minutes later, we had yeast!

In the meantime I’d found two sachets of fast-acting yeast in a seat-pocket of my car.

With these I made up a yeast liquid by stirring together half a jug of lukewarm water, a squirt of tomato puree, the two sachets of yeast, plus about 100-150g of flour.

For the first batch of dough – the savoury dough – students (the youngsters – all from the reception class) measured a mug of flour, tipped that into the bowl and added a quarter of a teaspoon of salt and half a sachet of yeast.

The liquid – 1/3^rd of a mug – was made up half and half the yeast liquid I’d made with some lukewarm water.

Once the dough was mixed (adding more water as needed), the children kneaded it until smooth then divided it into 2 equal pieces by sawing in half with the side of their hands. One half was to be a small pizza, the other made into two sizzlers.

Once these were made and the dough was proving, the students made a sweet dough – substituting a dessertspoon of sugar for the salt.

This time I made up yeast liquid by adding sufficient lukewarm water to the now very actively fermenting yeast mixture I’d made earlier. Plus the students also used the other half of their yeast sachet.

This time the dough was divided in two, half made 4 petit pain au chocolat and the other half made three iced buns.

It took a little juggling to bake all these, using my two small ovens and a domestic oven.

I had one minor misadventure when I put a tray containing a pizza on the top shelf of the domestic oven – not realising there was already one there! There was a ‘clunk’ followed by a sizzling sound as the pizza topping met the back of the oven. When I had removed the oven shelves I was able to get a metal spatula under the pizza which was leaning against the back of the oven.

Surprisingly, the pizza, although a bit battered, was OK – indeed, as young Izaak proved later on in the session, it was very tasty indeed! (It would have been a different story, I’m sure, had the pizza been a full size one!)

Here’s a (not very good) pic:

Just a few of the pizzas and sizzlers - the numbers are to identify the breads

Why was it a brilliant session?

When we started a couple of the mothers said, "We're not going to make all that, are we?"

Well, we did - just about. Everyone went home with 4 varieties of bread plus the recipes.

The adults (there was one grandparent) are managing to stay back and let their children do most of the work - although they find this difficult (holding back is far harder for them than the actual breadmaking!).

Another thing we're making progress with is giving the child time to react. So often I'll ask the child to, say, pick up the dough and wipe it round the side of the bowl. The child will take a second or so to react to this request, by which time the mother will chime in with "Pick up the dough, Chloe (or whoever)".

I'm asking them to hold back and give the child time. Chloe will carry out the required action - when the information has trickled through.

We were also able to cover the main reasons why they should make their own bread:
1. It's teaching their child a skill for life - besides which it's fun! (Not to mention being educational.)
2. It's healthier than shop-bought bread - they control the quality of the food their feeding to their family.
3. It will save them money - the pizzas and sizzlers cost about 70 or so pence - the sweet breads as little as 30p.

As they were all leaving I gave them all some homework - which is to invite someone into their kitchen and teach them what they've just learned!