On the Hunt for Wild Yeast

About a year ago I was on my first management contract up in Alaska onboard the ms. Zaandam. To say the least that contract brought me all matter of challenges and some fabulous memories too. Plenty of these memories were made in Juneau AK (The viking lounge to be precise the he). After an evening in Juneau the onboard acupuncturist told me she found an amazing bakery (http://wildoven.com) and that they do many different types of bread. On the menu she showed me the one that jumped off the page was the "Italian Chocolate Bread". The next week when we got back to Juneau I went looking for this fabulous bakery and it turned out to be right around the corner from my regular watering hole!
To say the least the chocolate bread just amazing. They cut me a nice big slice and I got it toasted and buttered!

Delicious Chocolate Bread

After all this Alaskan excitement when I got back home aka mammy and daddy's house in Roscommon and I went on Google and found a recipe! The catch was that they wanted me to use something called wild yeast(Sour Dough Starter). I had never heard of it, I hadn't got a clue what I was doing, so I did what we all do when in doubt and I googled. Google told me it was going to take FIVE DAYS!!!

FIVE DAYS

I want my chocolate bread NOW. So, I cheated and used regular old yeast..... The bread wasn't amazing, nice but not like I had hoped. I guess needed to teach myself how to make this crazy wild yeast.

Once I moved over to Seattle I decided to give this whirl. The first recipe I found said it was easy -they lied. I tried my best to follow the instructions, but after 3 days I had a foul smelling liquid which had grown extremely furry. I dumped the top half of it and continued on anyway but them I ended up with this solid ball....... None of which the recipe had mentioned I should have. So in the end I threw it all out and called it a bad job!

Seattle

Today however I am trying again with an extremely simple recipe. Flour and Water!! Wow Wee! Now that's not to difficult. It will take a total of 5 days to see if I am successful but if I am, it opens up a whole world of new recipes to me! Here is me counting for a success cause I am seriously wanting me some Italian Chocolate Bread!

So for those of you interesting I have added the recipe for below.

Day One:

4oz All Purpose Flour
4oz Filters Water

• Measure ingredients and put into a plastic or glass bowl and mix vigorously until you have a smooth batter. (It will look similar to pancake batter)
• You can now cover this with cling film or loosely with the lid or if you are me you can transfer it into a small glass container. 
• Now you need to leave your mixture somewhere with a constant temperature of 70˚f-75˚f or 21˚c- 23˚c.
• Leave for 24 hours.

Day One Wild Yeast (Sour Dough Starter)

Stay tuned for how the next 4 days go and hopefully next week we will be starting some tasty chocolate bread!

Tara x