I’m in England, in a field of Barley. Today, I’m going to collect wild yeast under that tree back there, and I’m going to show how to feed and grow it until it’s ready to bake with. We are going to start at the very beginning, and end at the end.

Let’s get started. We have some lovely whole meal organic hard red wheat flour, mixed with water until it’s just a bit thick; fluid but not runny. (If you’re a supernerd like me, you can pasteurize the flour first by baking the whole unopened bag at 160F/70C for 45 minutes.)

I’ve poured the mixture into a shallow dish. It’s important to carefully wash everything before starting, so as not to contaminate it with anything, before we intentionally contaminate it with everything out in Nature.

Place it somewhere biologically interesting. Like here. And put a screen over it. We want microbigs, non actual bugs, in the culture.

The idea is to expose the growth medium (food=flour) to as much microbiology as possible. I’m going to leave this for 8 hours. It’s England so it will also rain, even if sun is forecast. This is fine. We are fine. Everything is FINE.

This is a Muntjac, or “barking deer.” Isn’t he cute? Wait...

...no, NO! Not cute AT ALL. Bad muntjac BAD! Now we will have to start again tomorrow, this time a bit higher up! Aaaaargh everything is FINE!

OK! Second try. I have placed the culture medium (yeast trap) on a log amidst a (very lovely) bunch of HOLLY and STINGING NETTLE! BIOLOGICAL WARFARE. Let’s see if any animals are brave enough to touch my shit today! Bring it!

Now the wait begins.

Victory

No Muntjacs, no Pheasants. Five hours, some light rain, and lots and lots of biological contamination later, we have... yes... wait for it... basically the same thing we started with. I swear I have no idea why you all aren’t homicidally bored by this.

Fortunately, my favorite @Tesco carries the sistema soup cup... which is the perfect yeast incubator. I CAREFULLY CLEAN IT and pour the flour, water and (hopefully) English Countryside Yeast into it.

Add a couple scoops of Organic English Heirloom flour and water until it’s the consistency of a solid tile grout. Now we need to wait (yawn) as the very tiny amount of yeast I captured amplified over the next few days.

This morning, I was greeted by a stinky, brown-black liquid floating on top of the culture. This thrilled me as it means we successfully picked up some microbes. It obviously doesn’t take a lot to thrill me.

How do we get rid of the stinky microbes and keep the good ones? Survival of the fittest, Mr. Darwin. First, pour off all the liquid on top and also half the culture. (You are engaging in a brutal microscopic eugenics program, and you should feel vaguely evil.)

Now I add flour and water back to the original level. What we are doing is AMPLIFYING the microorganisms that can eat flour by feeding them and letting all the others starve and suffer. I cover this horror and let it sit another day.

Whelp, I had a peek this afternoon and there was yet another dark layer of liquid floating on top of the culture. So... poured out half and fed. This is picture perfect in my experience. Tomorrow we may even see some yeast bubble activity, though now I’ve said it we prolly won’t.

My good friend @HazelMonforton points out that I should encourage you not to accidentally consume any of this culture during the process. Good lab technique, meaning don’t lick anything; clean things that touch it. Unless you are bored with being healthy and being able to see.

Amazingly, we are seeing yeast action already. This is most likely because of the barley and other grains having been grown in these fields since, like, witches were being burned.

AMAZING SHOCKING UPDATE! This culture is acting a lot like the yeast is making big statistical wins. Go guys go. I don’t have my microscope here in the UK so I can’t be sure, but it looks amazingly advanced. And you’re right, I’m insane, this is the same picture over and over.

One way you can see that yeast is growing is that the culture is starting to get gelatinous, as you can see here. And yes, those are sterile latex gloves. I’m serious, this yeast wrangling is a serious business. I’m culling and feeding again, we will see what we have in the AM.

Lots of biological activity over the night. In the starter culture the frothy bubbles are clearly from yeast activity, and the smell is improving with a small sourdough tang becoming apparent. Once again half is discarded and overall the hope is that the good guys win in the end.

For those of you not yet dead of boredom: Finally a picture different enough that I can actually tell which one it is in my album. It’s looking like yeast! It smells good, bready, fresh. Very different from my other cultures, which is the point. We can bake with it soon.

Heres a mega-slo-mo of the process, from today back to the first fermentation. It’s basically froth farming. This is why only incredibly dull people such as me are emotionally able to so this.

It’s going to be ready to bake with tomorrow, IMHO. Which is handy as my package from @ShiptonMill arrived just now. If you’re somehow able to still hold your phone up to your face despite the debilitating dullness of this thread, we may have bread to see soon.

UPDATE 7.45AM dodgy hotel room, Kings Lynn, Norfolk, UK. Culture is READY. Smells good and bready, no hint of yuckiness. Yuckiness is constrained entirely to the hotel room. If we escape unharmed, bread will be made soon, in Northumberland, after a bit of a drive.

I am ensconced in magnificent Northumberland. I have a terrible cold, but who cares, I’m in a heartbreakingly beautiful house, baking with the yeast we collected in Buckinghamshire less than a week ago, using @Gilchesters organic Spelt that was grown and milled just up the road.

Dough is autolyzing, on a PROPER OVEN.

THE END. It worked, the bread is lovely, the oven pop was nuts, and the aroma is heavenly. This is 100% wholemeal local spelt on 100% wild local yeast, collected 6 days ago in a forest. This is ancient baking. @ClubYeast @Gilchesters

Finally, heres what’s inside. I wish I could send everyone a slice. But I’ll send the yeast culture out happily on @clubyeast when I return to the USA.