Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio, Hey
Speaker 1: rain Stuff, Lauren bogobam here. If you're making a raised
Speaker 1: baked good, there are a few ways you can achieve
Speaker 1: that height. Quick breads like muffins use chemical leaveners like
Speaker 1: baking powder. Cookies, bars, and cakes often use whipped eggs
Speaker 1: or creamed butter and sugar with tiny pockets of air
Speaker 1: carefully beaten in. But many breads and rolls use a
Speaker 1: living ingredient to get that rise. Yeast. This single celled
Speaker 1: organism is integral too many a baking process, transforming a solid,
Speaker 1: dense ball of dough into a soft, risen loaf. But
Speaker 1: not all yeast is the same. There are more than
Speaker 1: one thousand, five hundred recognized species of yeast in the world,
Speaker 1: with the first known types dating back hundreds of millions
Speaker 1: of years. Today's primary baking yeast species is Sacchara mices
Speaker 1: sera vizier. It's responsible for two of the tastiest yeast
Speaker 1: related food products out there, bread and beer. But how
Speaker 1: can a tiny organism only visible with the microscope create
Speaker 1: two of the world's most beloved meal time staples, and
Speaker 1: is baking with yeast as intimidating as it seems. Let's
Speaker 1: back up a step. A yeast is a single celled
Speaker 1: fungus related to mushrooms. Yeast used by bakers, s seravisier
Speaker 1: is known as a sugar eating fungus. Simple sugars like sucrose, fructose, glucose,
Speaker 1: and maltose helped the yeast thrive, and once metabolized, the
Speaker 1: sugars ultimately lead to risen bread. The process is known
Speaker 1: as alcoholic fermentation. When you mix flour, water, and yeast together,
Speaker 1: the yeast eats these simple sugars in the flour and
Speaker 1: poops alcohol, carbon dioxide bubbles and molecules that we consider
Speaker 1: flavor into the doughy mix. The carbon dioxide bowls can't
Speaker 1: escape the elastic dough, so instead they cause it to rise.
Speaker 1: When you bake that dough, you're firming up the matrix
Speaker 1: of proteins like gluten in the dough around those air bubbles,
Speaker 1: resulting in what we know as fluffy, tender yeast leavened bread.
Speaker 1: There are two primary types of baker's east on the market.
Speaker 1: Active yeast and instant yeast. Both come to you dried
Speaker 1: and granulated in small packets, but each brings something slightly
Speaker 1: different to the table. Active yeast must be activated with
Speaker 1: warm water before using instant yeast can go straight into
Speaker 1: your dough and get to work. The fermentation process with
Speaker 1: active dry yeast takes longer than with instant yeast. This
Speaker 1: can lead to subtly different flavors and breads made with
Speaker 1: active yeast over instant. For the article this episode is
Speaker 1: based on, has to Work, spoke of Kelly Olson, a
Speaker 1: representative for the company Red Star Yeast. She said, when
Speaker 1: yeast has more time to work the dough, more flavor
Speaker 1: and a better texture is developed, and so there's some
Speaker 1: benefit to the more moderate active dry yeast. But then
Speaker 1: there are other products where instant yeast is very favorable
Speaker 1: as well. Instant east is more shelf stable than active
Speaker 1: yeast and provides more consistent results over time, which is
Speaker 1: great when you're baking in bulk or when you're looking
Speaker 1: for a more mildly flavored baked good. But you don't
Speaker 1: technically have to buy yeast. You can make your own.
Speaker 1: When people made bread in ancient times right up through
Speaker 1: the mid eighteen hundreds, they may not have known what
Speaker 1: they were doing, but they were making their own yeast.
Speaker 1: The same goes for you making a sour dough starter today,
Speaker 1: you simply mix equal parts filtered water and flour and weight.
Speaker 1: If conditions are right, naturally occurring yeasts that live in
Speaker 1: the air around us, we'll get to work and grow
Speaker 1: a colony that you can then use to make bread.
Speaker 1: Often throughout history, bread makers would get a little help
Speaker 1: from beer brewers. Sometimes these workers were one and the same.
Speaker 1: Baker's used balm the frothy east colony left over from
Speaker 1: brewing beer as a starter to raise their breads. Brewers
Speaker 1: at the time we're capturing wild yeasts as well by
Speaker 1: letting their beers ferment in open containers. But these wild
Speaker 1: yeasts are different from the packets of Baker's east available
Speaker 1: in stores. Olsen said. A commercial yeast is made from
Speaker 1: a pure strain of Saccaro Mices seravisier. When you try
Speaker 1: to make your own yeast, you're actually getting wild yeast
Speaker 1: that's not necessarily from sacaramceas servisier. You're not getting pure yeast,
Speaker 1: and you're not necessarily getting something that's consistent or that
Speaker 1: will perform the same as commercial yeast. That unpredictability, both
Speaker 1: with wild yeast and even with store bought yeast is
Speaker 1: one reason why yeast can intimidate bakers, but Olson, who
Speaker 1: feels numerous calls for Red Stars East customers, says Baker's
Speaker 1: East isn't a scary as it seems. She explained that
Speaker 1: it really comes down to watch in your dough while
Speaker 1: it rises, versus sticking solely to your recipes timetables. She said,
Speaker 1: I always encourage people to go by the look and
Speaker 1: feel of the dough. I use the recipe as a guide,
Speaker 1: but realize that things can vary from batch to batch,
Speaker 1: and so it's best to go by what the dough
Speaker 1: is doing. And yes, brewers and winemakers also use s
Speaker 1: Seravisier and other yeasts to create alcoholic beverages. In beer,
Speaker 1: yeast eats the sugars in malted barley to create alcohol,
Speaker 1: carbon dioxide bubbles and flavors. S. Sarahvisier is the go
Speaker 1: to for ale style beers, while another species, Sacchara Mices pastorianis,
Speaker 1: is typically used in laggers, and recently brewers began experimenting
Speaker 1: with wild yeasts again. In wine, yeast is already present
Speaker 1: on grape skins, but most winemakers also add a pure
Speaker 1: culture like s seravisier to ensure that their fermentation occurs reliably.
Speaker 1: The yeast is very particular and easy to kill. In
Speaker 1: temperatures of a hundred and twenty degrees fahrenheit or forty
Speaker 1: eight point eight celsius or higher will start killing it,
Speaker 1: but the cultures can go dormant and then be rejuvenated
Speaker 1: down the road, even if that road covers five thousand years.
Speaker 1: One egyptologist uncovered yeast microbes in ceramics from over five
Speaker 1: thousand years ago. He and his team extracted the yeast
Speaker 1: then baked bread with it, resulting in a successful sweet
Speaker 1: sour dough. Today's episode is based on the article yeast
Speaker 1: is the Magic microbe that makes Bread Rise on how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com, written by Stephanie Vermillion. Brain Stuff
Speaker 1: is production of iHeart Radio in partnership with how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. Four
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