I have made and nurtured natural yeast for baking in the past. Problem is if you don't bake on a regular basis, the cost and effort of maintaining your live yeast culture is crazy. I recently purchased a freeze dryer (love it!!) and was wondering if I could freeze dry my live yeast culture and use it like dry yeast.
-
1Yeast as in sourdough culture?– Stephie ♦Aug 22, 2017 at 21:01
-
yes. I think i've read that if you let your yeast dry and become flaky then you save it can reconstitute it later. I wanted to take it a step further and have a long lasting storage. The only other reference i've seen referred to is a bio control yeast candida Sake, whereby you add 10% skim milk to the yeast which changes its viability from .2% to 30-30% after freeze-drying.– MarkAug 23, 2017 at 21:34
-
I've never done it, but years ago I read that you could spread sourdough starter out thinly, then let it dry. You can then break it into flakes and store it as a precaution against losing the rest of your starter. So it might not require freeze drying.– JoeNov 2, 2020 at 15:37
-
1you can put your culture in the fridge and then you only need to feed it weekly, or if you bake very infrequently you can create a new culture each time (it takes 1-2 weeks until it's ready for baking)– EstherAug 23, 2022 at 19:24
1 Answer
I successfully freeze dried my kefir grains and sourdough starter by first adding in 20-25% (weight/weight) sugar and freezing it into small disks. The sugar stabilizes it against the freeze drying process and I observed no significant drop in activity following reconstitution.
-
As it’s currently written, your answer is unclear. Please edit to add additional details that will help others understand how this addresses the question asked. You can find more information on how to write good answers in the help center.– Community BotApr 27 at 20:22