03
Nov
In baked products yeast increases the volume and improves the flavour texture grain colour and eating quality. Sources indicate that the history of bread goes back to 8000BC and the history of yeast to 3500BC.
The oldest known ovens were unearthed in Croatia in 2014.
History of yeast in baking. There is no information when yeast was first used to bake bread but the earliest definite records come from Ancient Egypt. There are ideas that a mixture of flour meal and water was left longer than usual on a warm day and the yeasts that are naturally in the flour caused it to ferment before baking. The bakers werent happy because that changed the yeast they could get from the brewers.
While top-cropped yeast was previously plenty and of good quality the new type of yeast was harvested from the bottom of the fermentation vessel and was full of bitter hop compounds hop resins and cold break coagulated proteins which tasted bitter and looked darker than previous yeast making it unsuitable for baking. Elizabeth David in English Bread and Yeast Cookery 1977 noted that Bakers yeast as we now know it is manufactured only in factories specializing in production of this particular type of yeast on a massive scale. Originally when the distillation of baking yeast was first developed in the mid nineteenth century the basis was a wort or infusion of grain wheat rye malted barley or of potatoes and sugar.
Yeast was already an important business even though no one had understood how it worked. The production of commercial yeast began in France in the 1850s. In the US compressed yeast cakes were introduced to the nation at Philadelphiaâs Centennial Exposition in 1876 which drew 10 million visitors.
Sources indicate that the history of bread goes back to 8000BC and the history of yeast to 3500BC. Archaeological excavations identified that yeast was used before 2000BC in Babylonia and ancient Egypt. Ancient peoples were interested in yeast as it rapidly consumes sugar and produces CO 2 carbon dioxide and causes the leavening of bread.
During bread making in early times dough was kept in a natural environment so that natural wild yeast. The history of yeast took a decisive turn in 1857 when Louis Pasteur discovered the fermentation process. Relive this small nineteenth century revolution.
The history of yeast takes us back to 1680. Using a microscope Leeuwenhoeck observed beer yeast globules for the first time. The first yeast was just there - in the environment everywhere.
People discovered very early on that leaving the dough or just a flour-water slurry out would lead to it getting sour and bubbly thus leavening the bread. What we today call sourdough is in fact a mixture of yeasts and bacteria lactobacillae. In baked products yeast increases the volume and improves the flavour texture grain colour and eating quality.
When yeast water and flour are mixed together under the right conditions all the food required for fermentation is present as there is enough soluble protein to build new cells and enough sugar to feed them. The oldest known ovens were unearthed in Croatia in 2014. They are estimated to be 6500 years old.
The Egyptians were also pioneers in baking as the first recorded civilization to use yeast in their bread as long ago as 2600 BC. Then there was the Roman Empires Bakers Guild. Meanwhile the introduction of baking powder saw the style of cakes change from dense yeast-based bakes into cakes made with flour eggs fat and a raising agent.
Professor John Walter is Emeritus Professor in the Department of History at the University of Essex. They are most likely the older of the two since yeast has been around for thousands of years whereas baking soda used in the cake donuts is a pretty recent invention. When you make a yeast donut you need some patience since the yeast in the donut will need time to puff up and create air bubbles.
These differences explain the requirement of the baking industry for a large-scale commercial source of yeast. The earlier bakers yeast plants well into the 20th century produced a mixture of alcohol and bakers yeast from grain mash fermentations. Both alcohol and yeast were sold.
With the newfound knowledge that yeast was a living organism and the ability to isolate yeast strains in pure culture form the stage was set for commercial production of bakers yeast. American Yeast and its Baltimore plant were acquired in 1989 which marked the beginning of the expansion of Lallemand Baking activities outside of Canada. Lallemand Baking became active in Europe through the acquisition of a yeast plant in Salutaguse Estonia in 1994.