by Lucynda Rowen

Created on: September 20, 2008

Yeast is more than just an ingredient in bread. It's a living, breathing, eating, reproducing single celled organism and its life cycle is a very important part of making truly perfect bread. Like all living breathing creatures it needs to be loved, fed, and nurtured to fulfill its purpose in this universe and that purpose is to make your bread rise.
Yeast eats sugar and excretes carbon dioxide gas and ethyl alcohol. Those little bubble of carbon dioxide are what make all of the little holes in risen bread and therefore what causes bread dough to turn from an elastic compressed ball of flour and water into a warm, fragrant, loaf of bread. The alcohol produced is what gives the bread its flavor and this flavor can be modified by fermenting the yeast in different ways.

Your yeast to be active the temperature for fermentation needs to be 33 to 130 degrees F. anything over 90 degrees can cause to acids to be produced and this can cause the bread to have an unpleasant flavor. My mother recommends fermenting ones yeast in water that feels pleasantly warm to the touch, kind of like bath water. But if you take really hot baths your skin can become less sensitive to warm water and you could end up with water that's to hot so it's really best to use a thermometer.

The easiest way to flavor your bread is the "Altus brat" method or the "Old Bread" method. This means that from each batch of bread you make you save a piece to help flavor the next batch. Old dough can last at room temperature for 6 hours, refrigerated for 48 hours or frozen in an air tight container for up to three months.

The next method is the "sponge" method. To make this you will mix together equal parts flour and water and then half of the yeast required for your recipe. Then you sit this aside at room temperature and allow it to ferment. This can be used after 1 hour but ideally should be used after 4 hours. This also can be stored or frozen to be used at a later date.

Another method called the "Biga". To make this starter you will use 1/3 the required amount of water for the recipe and 2/3 rds the amount of flour. This starter should not be used until 6 hours after its been made and allowed to sit at room temperature and can be kept for up to three days before being used. This method with Russian origins makes the most favorable kind of bread.

Sometimes no matter what you do your yeast will fail. If your not sure if your starter is growing like it should be then all you have to do is lean down and take a whiff. It should smell like warm beer.

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