Minimal Yeast Bread

Yeast is scarce these days. Our household is fortunate to have a few envelopes, and I have managed to make one standard envelope last for many, many loaves. It took about 1/4 teaspoon (or maybe a little less) to make all this today.



The "secret" is that you really don't need much yeast at all when you make bread, as long as you make a sponge of flour, water, salt, and a small amount of yeast, and let it rise slowly (eight hours overnight will do) at room temperature in a tightly-covered container (I use a big stock pot with a glass lid). In the morning start stirring in flour, and then kneading the flour in, until the dough can't absorb any more. Let it rise for a while, and then form it into loaves or rolls, and let it rise again.

I baked the rolls at 400, and they were done in 20 minutes. Then I lowered the oven to 375 and baked the bread for about 40 minutes.

My flour of choice is half King Arthur white flour and half Bob's Red Mill whole wheat pastry flour. And I use kosher salt. We have mineral-rich water, which isn't good for beans, but it is good for bread.

King Arthur flour is scarce as well these days. You can't even buy it online. I'm hoping to find some Bob's Red Mill whole wheat pastry flour when we next go to the store, because we don't have enough left to make bread with.

But my hopes are not high. For the nonce I guess we might have to make do with whatever flour we find. And when the yeast is almost used up (we had three envelopes, but put one in today's mail for our bread-making son), I'll try using it for a sourdough starter.

I'll let you know how it turns out!