well, I gave in and just added a couple more teaspoons of activated yeast, incorporated, kneaded, and shaped. turned out ok, but a didn't get any of the interesting flavors I had sought with a longer ferment... probably because nothing was fermenting. so many dead yeast cells in this loafππ
@izaya I've been meaning to look up how humans started leavening bread this way. the weird thing really is grinding grains down to flour: like why would you think that makes sense if you'd never done it? and then baking it? you can imagine how you get yeast from unleavened bread dough: you just forget about it and leave it out for a while then still be hungry enough to cook that weird sticky dough that's bigger for some reason