Art of Baking with Natural Yeast, 2nd edition: Breads, Pancakes, Waffles, Cinnamon Rolls and Muffins

By Caleb Warnock and Melissa Richardson

This is the book you’ve been waiting for! With groundbreaking information about the health benefits of natural yeast, this book will revolutionize the way you bake! Easy to prepare and use, natural yeast breaks down harmful enzymes in grains, makes vitamins and minerals more easily available for digestion, and converts bread into a nutritious food source that won’t spike your body’s defenses. Improve your digestive health and happiness with these delicious recipes you can’t find anywhere else!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cedar Fort Publishing & Media
• Release date: Feb 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9781462129072

Book preview

What Is Natural Yeast?

Most people don’t know that grocery store yeast is not a naturally occurring substance. Since 1984, the vast majority of yeast has been man-made and laboratory created. This means that for the first time in 6,000 years, humans are eating bread that is not made with natural yeast. Some people are now beginning to ask if this synthetic yeast is making us sick.

Commercial instant yeast was created to be fast, and is called quick or fast-rise yeast. In fact, the quick yeast produced for store-bought brands is so foreign to our digestive systems that some people develop allergies to the yeast itself. Sure, it frees up the schedule a bit. But when you consider that every culture across the globe has been using the same system for thousands of years, you have to wonder whether throwing that tried and true system out the window is considered progress.

Don’t get us wrong. We are no enemy of commercial yeast. In today’s frenzied world, anything that can help parents provide home-baked goodness for their loved ones is a good thing. You’ve heard the saying Good, better, best, never let it rest, meaning that there is always room for personal improvement. We’re going to apply that saying to bread baking:

Good= Buying whole wheat bread from the store.

Better= Making your own whole wheat bread with instant yeast.

Best= Making your own whole wheat bread with natural yeast.

Natural yeast has several health benefits that you can’t get from instant yeast:

Natural yeast breaks down harmful enzymes in grains.

Natural yeast takes the nutrition in grains—the vitamins and minerals our bodies crave—and makes them easily available for digestion.

Natural yeast converts dough into a digestible food source that will not spike your body’s defenses. It predigests sugars for diabetics, breaks down gluten for the intolerant, and turns calcium-leaching phytic acid into a cancer-fighting antioxidant.

Let’s take a closer look at how this system works.

A Natural History of Yeast, and Why It Matters

Wild, natural yeast is everywhere—in the air you breathe, on the bark of trees, on leaves. Have you ever seen the white film on backyard grapes? That’s wild yeast. The same film can be found on juniper berries. For centuries, both berries have been used as a natural start for bread yeast.

Yeast is a single-celled fungus, and it’s the first domesticated living creature in history. Modern science has identified more than 1,000 different varieties of wild yeast. These organisms are so small that hundreds of millions, if not billions, fit into a single teaspoon.

Once you have learned to maintain a natural yeast start in your own home, you will never have to buy commercial yeast again.

But not all yeast varieties are the same. For example, the kind of yeast used to make beer is not the same kind of yeast used to make bread. Different natural yeasts have different flavors—some are strongly sour, some are mildly sour, and some are not sour at all. Some are better at raising bread than others. This is why the best strains of natural yeast have been passed down through generations and communities.

Until the nineteenth century, homemade yeast was the only kind there was. In 1857, Louis Pasteur discovered that living organisms—yeasts—were responsible for fermentation. Yeast was already an important business, even though no one had understood exactly how it worked. Founded in 1853 and based in France, Société Industrielle Lesaffre is the world’s leading producer of yeast and sells commercial yeast in more than 180 countries today. In the United States, it is marketed as Red Star yeast. The company was created when two cousins, Louis Lesaffre-Roussel and Louis Bonduelle Dalle, started a distillery producing ethanol from juniper berries and grain. In the early 1870s, an industrial way to extract specific kinds of yeast was invented. In 1873, Lesaffre built the first plant for producing fresh yeast.[1]

Meanwhile, in the United States, competition was brewing. The Fleischmann brothers built a yeast plant in Cincinnati, Ohio, and patented a compressed yeast cake that revolutionized home and commercial baking. In 1876, the Fleischmanns took their invention to Philadelphia’s Centennial Exposition, which drew ten million visitors. By the end of the Exposition, America had discovered Compressed Yeast Cake and Fleischmann’s Yeast had become a household word.

When America entered World War II, the company laboratories developed Active Dry Yeast® for the military, which did not require refrigeration. In 1984, Fleischmann’s did it again with RapidRise™yeast. This highly active, finer grain of dry yeast raises dough as much as 50 percent faster than regular active dry yeast. No wonder RapidRise is the yeast of choice for busy bakers today.[2]

The 1980s also saw another trend—the beginning of a continuing spike in celiac disease, gluten intolerance, acid-reflux disease, diabetes, and wheat allergies. There is evidence that using natural yeast can help combat these problems. We do know some things for sure. One woman in Pleasant Grove, Utah, recently told us that her husband, who is severely diabetic, was able to eat bread for the first time in years with no glycemic spike when she began making bread for him with a start of natural yeast we gave her. She first tested him on natural yeast waffles, and now he is able to eat bread on a regular basis. Several people with celiac disease have tried bread made with natural yeast and told us they had no reaction to it. Caleb Warnock, coauthor of this cookbook, had been taking prescription medication for severe acid-reflux disease for twelve years until he stopped eating white bread and started eating only 100 percent whole wheat bread made with natural yeast. He has not had a single day of heartburn since. He also lost twenty pounds.

The slow-rising process of natural yeast has many critically important health benefits. Here is what science can prove:

Natural yeast slows digestion to help you feel full longer, making it a natural way to eat less.

The organic acids produced during natural yeast fermentation lower the glycemic index of bread.[3]

Best of all, natural yeast lowers the body’s glycemic response to all carbohydrates. An intriguing 2009 study showed that not only did natural yeast bread lower the glycemic response better than whole wheat bread made with commercial yeast, but the body’s glycemic response also remained lower when eating a meal hours later. No other kind of bread produced the same result.[4]

A large, randomized clinical trial has shown that brewer’s yeast—long used as a health supplement—combined with selenium potentially lowers the risk of several cancers compared to a placebo.

A yeast-based product has been shown in clinical trials to reduce the incidence of cold and flu. Another yeast-based product has been shown to simultaneously boost the immune system and improve bone health.

A University of Michigan study showed that a once-a-day supplement of a yeast-derived compound called EpiCor significantly reduced seasonal allergy symptoms, including nasal congestion, runny nose, and watery eyes.[5]

Natural yeast bread counteracts the deleterious effects of whole wheat on iron absorption, whereas sourdough bread making enhanced iron absorption and is a better source of available minerals, especially magnesium, iron, and zinc.[6]

The lactic acid and natural salts in sourdough bread slow down digestion, which means you feel full longer.[7]

Unwanted food-borne fungi are no match for the lactic acid produced by natural yeast, which has been shown to inhibit the growth of certain bacteria and mold. And sourdough bread has long been known to have a longer shelf life.[8]

Natural yeast is a time-tested source of the beneficial bacteria that we all need to get the most nutrition and essential minerals from the digestion process. In the normal scheme of things, we’d never have to think twice about replenishing the bacteria that allow us to digest food, said Sandor Ellix Katz, author of Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods, in a newspaper interview. Katz called antibiotics chlorinated water, and antibacterial soap factors in our contemporary lives that I’d group together as a ‘war on bacteria.’ … If we fail to replenish [good bacteria], we won’t effectively get nutrients out of the food we’re eating.[9]

Notes

Data from the International Directory of Company Histories

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Breadworld.com.

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2004, Emerging Food Research and Development Report

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2009, University of Guelph, Ontario

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Biotech Business Week

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Nutrition, 2003

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Time magazine, March 1997

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Life Science Weekly

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Sandor Ellix Katz, Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods

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Anatomy of Wheat

Wheat is a seed

Wheat grains were designed to pass through the digestive tracts of grazing animals and then be planted on the other end in its own private fertilizer patty. Wheat can survive digestion or be stored for years without losing its ability to become a plant. How does it do this? Wheat kernels, known as wheat berries, are plant starter kits. They contain the oils, nutrients, simple sugars, and fiber needed to grow wheat grass.

Inside the wheat berry, nutrients such as calcium, zinc, iron, magnesium, and phosphate are chained and guarded like prisoners in a fortress by a little guy called phytic acid. His job is to hold on to every nutrient until an enzyme called phytase, the lookout in the watchtower, gives him the all clear.

When wheat is ground into flour, it blasts some of those chains and frees a few nutrients. While the wheat flour moves through our digestive tract, phytic acid panics and runs around snatching up all nutrients that fit the description of the ones he was holding on to. Remember, his job is to make sure that none of those nutrients are digested. He does such a good job that he snatches up nutrients from other foods we’ve been eating. We never even realize we’ve been robbed.

So how do we get phytic acid to stand down and release the nutrients? We have to deal with phytase, the guy in the watchtower. We use natural yeast to trick phytase into thinking the seed has been planted and it’s time for the nutrients to go to work. This is because natural yeast starters are acidic, low in pH, and moist—just like soil.

When we work our starter into a dough, phytase recognizes the change in environment and gives the all clear for the nutrients to be released. On average, this process takes at least six hours, as the starter reproduces and spreads throughout the dough, neutralizing the phytic acid as it goes.

But here’s the best part: once phytic acid has completed his assignment, he gets a new one. He runs around with his empty chains and snatches up cancer-causing free-radicals. So the good stuff gets to us, and the bad stuff gets carted off.