After my mother passed away my dad took up baking. No bread maker for him, he made bread like his mother had done in her day, from scratch.
I have fond memories of dropping into his place early in the morning for coffee. On the right day, I’d walk into the aroma of freshly baked bread, one of which would usually end up coming home with me. Dad never made just one loaf.
Bread is a life staple stretching back to our earliest times. As long as there has been grains to grind into flour, there has been bread to bake. The difference between a baked hunk of flour and water or a loaf of bread, yeast.
What is Yeast?
Yeast creates the action causing the loaf to rise, creating those lovely pockets of air and enriches the flavour. Yeast also works its magic to create wine and beer. In its simplest form, yeast is a single microscopic cell organism, a fungus. It’s naturally occurring, it can be found floating in the air. For it to grow, it converts its food into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Capturing and cultivating yeast into a leavening agent for bread is known to have started with the ancient Egyptians some 5,000 years ago. Then as now, all that was…
