hack it

Stay The Fuck Home The Hack It Series – Yeast

Yeast. Another unicorn. Especially fast acting yeast. Along with flour, it has disappeared from shelves. However, there is a solution, you just need to put a wee bit of work into it. But once you have made the initial yeast, you will always have yeast. What the hell am I talking about? This wonderful thing called a sourdough starter/wild yeast.

So far, I’ve blogged about how to make your own bread and how to make your own flour, now I’m going to help you make your own yeast.

If you want to read my adventures in making sour dough bread, here are the links. To see how to make your own sour dough starter/wild yeast see below.

https://notvegannowvegan.wordpress.com/2017/06/08/adventures-in-sourdough/

https://notvegannowvegan.wordpress.com/2017/06/08/i-will-become-a-sourdough-bread-baking-master/

https://notvegannowvegan.wordpress.com/2017/06/27/sourdough-bread-baking-round-2/

https://notvegannowvegan.wordpress.com/2018/05/03/am-i-a-sourdough-master-yet-one-year-later/

How To Make A Sour Dough Starter and How To Maintain It

This is a really good article on how to make your own starter/wild yeast. The one thing I would change about this recipe is use rye flour. You will end up with a much stronger starter and a better flavour. I originally tried using all purpose flour when I originally tried to make my own starter and it didn’t work. You really need a good whole grain. Spelt also works well, but rye has produced the best starter and bread for me.

https://www.thekitchn.com/how-to-make-your-own-sourdough-starter-cooking-lessons-from-the-kitchn-47337

This article will also tell you how to maintain your starter. When not using my starter for bread, I will feed it once a week.

Stay The Fuck Home The Hack It Series — Flour

In a world where the things we need, especially food, are no longer readily available, I thought I would start a second series called Hack It. Today I am going to post about flour.

Currently, buying flour is like trying to find a real life unicorn. Trying to buy specialty flours of any kind — good fucking luck! Seriously, good luck. I’ve come up with a list of ways to make your own. Read on!

As someone who has been making her own bread for years, both in a bread machine and traditional sourdough, I go through a lot of bread flour. Right now, because of the pandemic, everyone and their uncles cousin have decided to do the same and because of this, there is ZERO bread flour on the shelves. Until recently, even all purpose flour was hard to find. I have noticed it returning to grocery shelves. However, I still need bread flour. Solution, I will make it my own damn self.

I thought it would be helpful to not only add recipes and links to make specialty flours, I am also including how to make your own flour.

Bread Flour Recipe

If you plan on making sour dough or breadmachine bread, you really need bread flour.

  1. Measure out 1 cup all-purpose flour (4 1/2 ounces or 129 grams).
  2. Remove 1 1/2 teaspoons (1/8 ounce or 4 grams).
  3. Add 1 1/2 teaspoons vital wheat gluten (1/8 ounce or 5 grams).
  4. Whisk or sift to combine.

Self Rising Flour

Many biscuit recipes call for this kind of flour. The occasional cake recipe does as well.

1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

Whisk or sift to combine.

How To Make Flour

Making your own flour is actually really easy, especially if you have a blender. You can also use a coffee bean blender, you will just need to do it in smaller batches. I’ve made my own flour before using wheat berries or oats, but you can use many different grains, depending on the type of flour you want. Here is a link to a really helpful article about how to do it yourself.

http://eatsimplyeatwell.com/2013/01/make-it-yourself-fresh-ground-flour-in-a-blender/

Pastry Flour
Combine 3 parts all-purpose flour to 1 part cake flour. Sift several times to ensure complete mixing.

Cake Flour
https://www.mybluprint.com/article/how-to-substitute-cake-flour

Almond Flour and Other Nut Flours

Place nuts, skins removed, into a food processor or a high speed blender blender with a pulse option. Pulse until it becomes a fine, flour-like texture. Make sure you don’t over-pulse, or you’ll end up with nut butter, which in my opinion is a win, win kinda mistake.