Yeast is an essential ingredient for every baker. It’s necessary to help bread dough rise and it also boosts its flavor. However, if you’ve never used it before, there are a few things you should know. Keep reading for some of our fool-proof tips for baking with yeast.
What Is Yeast?
Yeast is a single-celled fungus that can be found just about everywhere, including in the air, in your body and in your food. When talking about baking, there are three different types of yeast that are used. Dry yeast, fresh yeast and natural yeast. Dried yeast is comprised of dormant yeast cells that have to be activated. Until they are activated, they can remain dormant and unrefrigerated for several months.
The two types of dry yeast are known as rapid rise yeast and active dry yeast. Fresh yeast for contrast does need to be refrigerated because the yeast cells have been activated and they can die easily. Natural yeast is cultivated using grain (often rye or wheat flour) that’s allowed to ferment in water. Whichever kind you use, they all work in the same fashion and are used as a leavening agent in baking.
How Does Yeast Work?
Yeast is a living organism that survives and thrives on warmth, moisture and sugar. When yeast metabolizes sugar and starch, it produces alcohol and carbon dioxide. The alcohol adds flavor to baked goods while the carbon dioxide is the leavening agent that gives bread the nice “rise” we all know and love. However, yeast can be a bit unstable, which is why many people shy away from experimenting with it. You shouldn’t though because the results can be phenomenal with a bit of practice.
Yeast Is Sensitive
Temperatures can drastically affect yeast activity. The colder the temp, the less active the yeast will be. Bakers will often place dough in the fridge to slow down the process and increase flavor. Warmth, on the other hand, makes yeast very active. However, once you cross the line into too hot, the yeast will die. If you want to proof dough quickly, you would do it in the oven as it preheats. Proofing dough in the fridge is much slower. If you use dry yeast that requires you to mix it with water, be sure to avoid high temperatures so you don’t kill it.
Yeast Likes Water
By adding water to yeast (provided it’s the right temp) you basically “wake” the organisms up. Though water will make yeast active, it doesn’t feed the yeast cells. For yeast cells to proliferate quickly, you have to feed them. Yeast loves the starches and sugars found in bread dough. If you feed yeast the food it likes, it multiplies quickly. To help control how fast yeast grows, some bakers add salt to their recipes. Salt helps slow down yeast growth, although you have to be careful not to use too much. Just like water that’s too hot, too much salt can be a killer as well.
When Your Dough Doesn’t Rise
Sometimes, despite your best efforts, your dough won’t rise. This happens and could be due to several factors. It’s possible you got a bad batch of yeast. This can happen with dry and natural yeast. Yeast has an expiration date, which means it can die if it’s been sitting in your pantry for too long. You also could have accidentally killed your yeast by using water that was too hot.
In either case, you’ll have to start over and make a fresh batch of dough. Sometimes dough doesn’t rise because temperatures in the environment are too cold. If you can place the dough somewhere warmer, it should begin to rise properly. You can also affect your dough’s rise by using too much sugar or flour, by kneading the dough improperly, or by using flours that aren’t as conducive to rising.
One more thing to note before you start baking is that not all yeast types are the same. Even though yeast does essentially the same thing, whatever kind you use—each does it just a little differently. It’s highly recommended that you only use the type of yeast your recipe calls for, at least when you’re just starting out. Once you have some experience, you can start tweaking. Once you’ve reached the stage where you can begin tweaking, you’ll know you’ve reached master baker status. We say, bake on!
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