How American Kitchens Kept Bread Starter Alive Before Yeast Packets

🔗 How To Keep a House the Old Way, My Complete Illustrated Collection: 📗 https://clarasamericanattic.com I explain how American home bakers kept bread starters alive for generations before commercial yeast packets existed, covering the hop yeast, potato yeast, salt rising, and sourdough traditions that kept loaves rising in kitchens across the country. In this video I walk through the different substances a nineteenth and early twentieth century kitchen called "yeast," from brewery dregs to hop-and-potato jugs to the strange bacterial starter behind salt rising bread. I explain how women judged a starter by smell and bubbles rather than any thermometer, how they moved jugs between cellar and pantry with the seasons, and how a single cup held back from each batch let a starter outlive any one baking day. I also trace how commercial yeast, from Fleischmann's compressed cakes in 1868 to wartime active dry yeast, gradually replaced the jug in most American homes by the mid-twentieth century. What's covered in this video: I start with what yeast actually is, a living fungus, and why Eliza Leslie's 1837 cookbook warned it would scarcely keep a week even in cold weather. I go through emptins, the old term for yeast skimmed or drained from brewery barrels, and why it gave bread a bitter edge. I explain hop yeast using Maria Parloa's 1881 recipe, and how hops' mild antibacterial qualities kept a jug sweet longer than plain flour and water. I cover potato yeast from Lydia Maria Child's 1833 Frugal Housewife and explain why she warned it should be used while new. I look at Catharine Beecher's milk rising method and a handwritten 1857 "fountain rising" recipe from Jane Hassler's notebook at the University of Iowa. I describe salt rising bread from 1778 Appalachia, its reliance on a bacterium rather than yeast, and how a USDA scientist identified Clostridium perfringens in it in 1923. I explain Mary Randolph's 1824 method of drying yeast into cakes, the same principle later used in factory-made dry yeast. I trace sourdough west with the California gold rush and north with the Klondike miners who carried starter pouches against their bodies for warmth. I tell the story of Carl Griffith's starter, said to have traveled the Oregon Trail in 1847 and later mailed to more than fifty thousand people. I cover the rise of Fleischmann's compressed yeast after 1868, the Northwestern Yeast Company, and the eventual formation of Standard Brands in 1929. I explain how baking soda and baking powder offered an alternative to keeping any starter at all. I finish with how wartime active dry yeast packets, and later instant and RapidRise yeast, largely replaced the home starter by the mid-twentieth century. Mentioned in this video: Eliza Leslie, Directions for Cookery, Aaron Bobrow-Strain, Manuscript Cookbooks Survey, Living History Farms, Maria Parloa, New Cook Book, Stephen Schmidt, Lydia Maria Child, The American Frugal Housewife, Mary Randolph. 00:00 The Stone Jug 00:22 Pull Up A Chair 01:08 A Living Thing 01:29 One Week At Best 01:52 Summer Was Worse 02:12 Ninety Percent At Home 02:33 A Word For Every Region 02:55 Emptins 03:16 Borrowed From The Brewer 03:37 The Catch With Beer 03:56 The Frontier Problem 04:17 Why Hops 04:37 A Guard In The Jar 04:57 Maria Parloa's Jug 05:16 Sugar, Salt, And A Cup 05:35 Stock Yeast 05:58 Two Jars, One Purpose 06:15 The Cool Place 06:35 Four Months In A Mason Jar 06:55 A Fridge Is A Cheat 07:18 Potato Yeast 07:38 Child's Recipe 07:55 Used While New 08:13 Quicker And Sweeter 08:34 How Much Went In 08:57 How It Died 09:19 Corked Tight 09:39 Milk Rising 10:00 Wild Help 10:19 Fountain Rising 10:43 Ginger In The Crock 11:01 Town And Country 11:22 Beecher's Luxury 11:40 Salt Rising 12:09 No Yeast At All 12:30 Very Ripe Cheese 12:50 Newly Discovered 13:14 The Bacterium's Name 13:35 What The Science Says 13:57 Keeping It Warm 14:19 Still Baked Today 14:40 Drying It 14:57 Randolph's Cakes 15:18 A Cake In A Tin 15:37 The Clever Part 15:54 A Gold Rush Myth 16:15 French Bakers 16:35 The Klondike 16:55 A Pouch At The Neck 17:13 Heat Kills, Cold Waits 17:31 Old Sourdoughs 17:49 The Chuck Wagon Crock 18:09 Your Family's Word 18:27 Eighteen Forty-Seven 18:46 Handed Down 19:06 The Sheep Camp 19:29 Mailed In An Envelope 19:51 Fifty Four Thousand 20:12 Eighteen Sixty-Eight 20:31 The Centennial 20:51 The Tinfoil Cake 21:13 Sixty-Five Degrees 21:31 It Went Bad Fast 21:50 Magic Yeast 22:10 One Company 22:29 The Factory Loaf 22:49 Why It Changed 23:09 The Quick Way Around 23:30 Biscuits Instead 23:50 The War 24:08 Granules 24:28 The 1950s Kitchen 24:48 Faster Still 25:10 What Stayed Behind 25:30 What The Packet Fixed 25:50 What It Cost 26:09 Labour Nobody Counted 26:28 Neither Golden Nor Grim 26:46 The Answer 27:06 The Cup Held Back 27:25 And A Neighbor 27:45 A Small Task 28:03 Tell Me The Word 28:23 Until Next Bake Day