suurdeeg, noun

/ˈsyːrdɪəx/
Forms:
Formerly also zuurdeeg.
Origin:
Afrikaans.
Yeast or leaven, made in various ways; bread made with this leaven. Usually with distinguishing epithet:
soet suurdeeg, formerly also zoet zuurdeeg, /ˈsut -/ [Afrikaans, soet (earlier South African Dutch zoet) sweet], home-made salt rising leaven (see quotation 1941); also attributive;
suur suurdeeg/ˈsyːr -/, formerly also zuur zuurdeeg [Afrikaans, suur (earlier South African Dutch zuur) sour], sour dough leavening made with a piece of dough from the last baking (see quotation 1923).
1923 S. van H. Tulleken Prac. Cookery Bk 4 (Swart)Sour Dough Yeast (Zuur Zuurdeeg). Take an earthenware saucepan; pour in 3 cups of boiling water; add 1¾ tablespoons of salt; sprinkle unsifted boermeal over to thickness of about an inch..; cover with a tight-fitting lid and leave in a warm place to rise overnight...Keep a small piece of dough of the last baking.
1934 Star 9 Apr. (Swart)It all depends whether you want a very light rusk made from compressed yeast, or a more substantial one made from Soet Suurdeeg.
1941 Fouché & Currey Hsecraft for Primary Schools 33Soet Suurdeeg (Salt Rising Yeast). Put 1 tablespoon salt into a warm basin, add 1 cup cold water and 2 cups boiling water. Stir in enough boer meal to make a batter and sprinkle meal over the top. Cover well and leave in a warm place overnight. Bread with soet zuurdeeg is kneaded with the yeast, shaped and allowed to rise only once.
1950 H. Gerber Cape Cookery 47Suurdeeg (Yeast). Take 1½ large breakfast cups of boiling water and a breakfast cup of cold water, a little salt and enough flour to make a thick paste...Cover the dish with a warm cloth..by the side of a fire until it sours...Both Vetkoek and Roosterkoek were made either with unleavened dough or with a dough leavened with suurdeeg.
1951 S. van H. Tulleken Prac. Cookery Bk 12Make yeast in the morning, using 2 yeast cakes,..or ‘zoet zuurdeeg’.
1955 V.M. Fitzroy Dark Bright Land 315The bread was suurdeeg, the heavy coarse loaf of the backveld farmhouse, made with fermented meal and to those who have not been brought up on it, an acquired taste.
1971 L.G. Green Taste of S.-Easter 90I do not know whether the soetsuurdeeg recipe for brown bread has been used at Buckingham Palace yet.
1971 C. Smuts Informant, Grahamstown (now Makhanda, Eastern Cape)Suurdeeg, the old-fashioned yeast they use on the farms still.
1978 Sunday Times 5 Mar. (Mag. Sect.) 3The woman had made roosterkoek and soetsuurdeeg bread.
1978 Sunday Times 7 May 12There’s a whole story to breadmaking with hops or soet suurdeeg, and I love it. In the country, housewives take it for granted that you make your own bread...There is another dough called Suur Suurdeeg — Sour Dough Ferment — and this to my mind is even more delicious, rather reminiscent of rye bread, which is slightly sour.
1980 Sunday Times 9 Mar. (Mag. Sect.) 5She..taught him to bake bread — he’s still a dab hand at kneading soetsuurdeeg-brood.
1980 Argus 28 Aug. 12In the old days the bread would have been made, with ‘soet suurdeeg’, a yeast started by fermenting raisins then adding a little flour, sugar and salt to luke-warm water and leaving it until the raisins floated to the surface and the mixture bubbled.
1988 Adams & Suttner William Str. 28The men who did the baking..were good men...We went to buy the suurdeeg from them — they kept this yeast in a big tin, it was always bubbling, and they ladled it in a mug for us, a penny a mug.
Yeast or leaven, made in various ways; bread made with this leaven. Usually with distinguishing epithet:
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Afrikaans
suster, nounn.suurpootjie, nounn.
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