Homemade Yeast in Western PA
I planted buckwheat this year because I'd heard it was really easy to grow in virgin soils (it is) and it was a prolific producer of grain that could be turned into flour for use in breads and pancakes. I thought it'd be cool to be able to make bread using flour that you had grown yourself. For the ultimate in do-it-yourselfdom I wondered if it was possible to make your own yeast, that way you could make bread that was sourced entirely from stuff you made. I remember looking up 'homemade yeast' on the interwebs and finding some pages that talked about the white powdery stuff on the stems of wild raspberry being a wild yeast and how you could take a stem of that and stick it in a bowl of flour and water and a 'yeast starter' could be made that way. That sounded a little weird to me and I kinna stopped reading about it at that point. Then we heard a bit about baking bread with homemade yeast on the Splendid Table podcast and it sounded super-cool. Here's a link to that site which does an awesome job laying out how to make your own yeast, step-by-step.
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we did this all the time in new york. some times the yeast that's the hardiest gets too sour, and we would start a new batch.
Yes, sourdough bread baking is great fun! Go for it!
Gonna give it a shot this winter. Once the buckwheat is dried and ground and we have a good starter off and running, will toss up some pics with some play-by-play if it's a success.