Yeast Bread

The leavening agent for the second major category of bread is a microorganism, yeast. Yeast

dough is considerably thicker than quick bread batter, thick enough that you can manipulate it by

hand. An essential part of yeast breads is gluten, that forms a structural framework for the bread,

something comparable to the steel framework of a modern building. Gluten is an organic material

that forms in the flour with moisture. It is this gluten structure that traps the gas that yeasts give

off—without this trap our bread would be heavy and flat. Yeast lives on sugar that it converts into

alcohol and carbon dioxide gas. While the gas remains in the dough, the alcohol escapes as it

evaporates during baking.

Let's take a closer look at the two basic ingredients in yeast breads.

Yeast

You take millions of lives while you are braking that wonderful, fresh irresistible yeast

bread. You are a veritable mass murderer. You bring the tiny, dormant dry yeast cells to life in

warm water, give them nutrients and prime, luxurious environment to grown in and multiply.

Finally, when they tripled and quadrupled in numbers and they consider you as the greatest

friend and benefactor they ever had, you kill them all in one terrifying moment in the heat of

your oven. If you carefully listen by your oven door, for a brief, disastrous moment you may hear

their last sickening screams as they unwillingly give their lives for your eating pleasure.

Yeast is a single-celled organism, a microscopic fungus related to mushrooms. Being a

fungus, yeast requires no oxygen to live and multiply. In fact, too much oxygen interferes with

yeast activities.

There are two types of bread yeast, both belong to the same species but are of different

genetic strains. For the home baker, fresh compressed yeast comes in small refrigerated packets.

It is fully alive but chilled to the bone—and so would you if you were sitting in the refrigerator

wrapped in nothing else but foil for weeks. But warm it up and it is instantly ready to work in

your bread dough.

This strain of yeast has little tolerance for either too cold or too hot temperatures. If you are

not reasonably exact, you either do not activate the cells in too cool water or kill them with too

much heat. Fresh compressed yeast acts faster and is cheaper than dry yeast, so commercial bakeries

prefer it. Otherwise it produces exactly the same breads as the second strain, active dry yeast.

Dry yeast requires no refrigeration. The living cells are dehydrated and dormant—not dead,

but not active until you provide an environment that yeast likes. Dry yeast only takes a few minutes

longer to activate in warm water than fresh yeast. It has a wider tolerance for variation in the

temperature of water, so it is particularly suitable for home bakers who don’t have as close a control

as bakeries do.

You can buy dry yeast in tiny individual packets or large containers, even in bulk in well-

stocked health food stores. If you use yeast fairly often, buy it in large amount and keep it in the

refrigerator or freezer. If frozen, it remains active for many years. The one or two tablespoons that

you take out at a time defrosts in seconds.

You want to give your little slaves, the yeast cells, the best opportunity in life. In return,

they will work as hard for you as they possibly can. Let’s just use the always readily available

and easy to use dry yeast strain.

Start with waking them up from their long sleep. They love the scorching Death Valley

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