Baker's yeast
Encyclopedia
Baker's yeast is the common name for the strains of yeast
commonly used as a leavening agent
in baking
bread
and bakery products, where it converts the fermentable
sugar
s present in the dough
into carbon dioxide
and ethanol
. Baker's yeast is of the species Saccharomyces cerevisiae
, which is the same species commonly used in alcoholic fermentation, and so is also called brewer's yeast.
The use of steamed or boiled potato
es, water from potato boiling, or sugar in a bread dough provides food for the growth of yeasts, however, too much sugar will dehydrate them. Yeast is inhibited by both salt
and sugar, but more so with salt than sugar. Fat
s such as butter
or eggs
slow down yeast growth, however others say the effect of fat on dough remains unclear, presenting evidence that small amounts of fat are beneficial for baked bread volume.
Saccharomyces exiguus (also known as S. minor) is a wild yeast found on plants, fruits, and grains that is occasionally used for baking; it is not, however, generally used in a pure form, but comes from being propagated in a sourdough
starter.
It is not known when yeast was first used to bake bread; the earliest definite records come from Ancient Egypt. Researchers speculate that a mixture of flour meal and water was left longer than usual on a warm day and the yeasts that occur in natural contaminants of the flour caused it to ferment before baking. The resulting bread would have been lighter and tastier than the previous hard flatbread
s. It is generally assumed that the earliest forms of leavening were likely very similar to modern sourdough; the leavening action of yeast would have been discovered from its action on flatbread doughs, and would either have been cultivated separately or transferred from batch to batch by means of previously mixed ("old") dough. Alternatively, the development of leavened bread seems to have developed in close proximity to the development of beer
brewing, and barm
from the beer fermentation process can also be used in bread making.
Without a full understanding of microbiology
, early bakers would have had little ability to directly control yeast cultures, but still kept locally interesting cultures by reusing doughs and starters to leaven later batches. However, it became possible to isolate and propagate favored yeast strains in the same manner as was done in the beer industry, and it eventually became practical to propagate yeast in a slurry with a composition similar to beer wort
, usually including malted barley and wheat flour. Such cultures (sometimes referred to in old American cookery as "emptins", from their origins as the dregs of beer or cider fermentation) would become the ancestors of modern baker's yeast, as they generally were carefully maintained to avoid what would later be discovered to be bacterial contamination, including using preservatives such as hops
as well as boiling the growth medium.
In the 19th century, bread bakers obtained their yeast from beer brewers, and this led to sweet-fermented breads such as the Imperial "Kaiser-Semmel" roll, which generally lacked the sourness created by the acidification typical of Lactobacillus
. However, beer brewers slowly switched from top-fermenting to bottom-fermenting yeast (both S. cerevisiae) and this created a shortage of yeast for making bread, so the Vienna Process
was developed in 1846. While the innovation is often popularly credited for using steam in baking ovens leading to a different crust characteristic, it notably included procedures for high milling of grains (see Vienna grits), cracking them incrementally instead of mashing them with one pass; as well as better processes for growing and harvesting top-fermenting yeasts, this was known as press-yeast.
Refinements in microbiology following the work of Louis Pasteur
led to more advanced methods of culturing pure strains. In 1879, Great Britain introduced specialized growing vats for the production of S. cerevisiae, and in the United States around the turn of the century centrifuges were used for concentrating the yeast, making modern commercial yeast possible, and turning yeast production into a major industrial endeavor. The slurry yeast made by small bakers and grocery shops became cream yeast, a suspension of live yeast cells in growth medium, and then compressed yeast, the fresh cake yeast that became the standard leaven for bread bakers in much of the Westernized world during the early 20th century.
During World War II
, Fleischmann's developed a granulated active dry yeast for the United States armed forces, which did not require refrigeration and had a longer shelf life and better temperature tolerance than fresh yeast; it is still the standard yeast for US military recipes. The company created yeast that would rise twice as fast, cutting down on baking time. Lesaffre
would later create instant yeast in the 1970s, which has gained considerable use and market share at the expense of both fresh and dry yeast in their various applications.
Baker's yeast is available in a number of different forms, the main differences being the moisture contents. Though each version has certain advantages over the others, the choice of which form to use is largely a question of the requirements of the recipe at hand and the training of the cook preparing it. Dry yeast forms are good choices for longer-term storage, often lasting several months at room temperatures without significant loss of viability. With occasional allowances for liquid content and temperature, the different forms of commercial yeast are generally considered interchangeable.
For most commercial uses, yeast of any form is packaged in bulk (blocks or freezer bags for fresh yeast; vacuum-packed brick bags for dry or instant); however, yeast for home use is often packaged in pre-measured doses, either small squares for compressed yeast or sealed packets for dry or instant. For active dry and instant yeast, a single dose (reckoned for the average bread recipe of between 500 g and 1000 g of dough) is generally about 2.5 tsp
(~12 mL) or about 7 g (1/4 ounce), though comparatively lesser amounts are used when the yeast is used in a pre-ferment. A yeast flavor in the baked bread is generally not noticeable when the bakers' percent
of added yeast is less than 2.5.
to have its entire genome
sequenced
. It has over 12 million base pair
s and around 6000 gene
s. Since then it has remained on the forefront of genetic research. For example, most of our knowledge of the cell division cycle was worked out from experiments with yeast.
Baker's yeast contains enzyme
s which can reduce
a carbonyl
group into a hydroxyl
group in fairly high yield, thus making it a useful bio-reagent in chemical syntheses. It is known to reduce organometallic carbonyl compounds in very high yield.
Baker's yeast can also be used to produce ethanol via fermentation for use in chemical synthesis, although doing so in some places requires permits.
Yeast
Yeasts are eukaryotic micro-organisms classified in the kingdom Fungi, with 1,500 species currently described estimated to be only 1% of all fungal species. Most reproduce asexually by mitosis, and many do so by an asymmetric division process called budding...
commonly used as a leavening agent
Leavening agent
A leavening agent is any one of a number of substances used in doughs and batters that cause a foaming action which lightens and softens the finished product...
in baking
Baking
Baking is the technique of prolonged cooking of food by dry heat acting by convection, and not by radiation, normally in an oven, but also in hot ashes, or on hot stones. It is primarily used for the preparation of bread, cakes, pastries and pies, tarts, quiches, cookies and crackers. Such items...
bread
Bread
Bread is a staple food prepared by cooking a dough of flour and water and often additional ingredients. Doughs are usually baked, but in some cuisines breads are steamed , fried , or baked on an unoiled frying pan . It may be leavened or unleavened...
and bakery products, where it converts the fermentable
Fermentation (food)
Fermentation in food processing typically is the conversion of carbohydrates to alcohols and carbon dioxide or organic acids using yeasts, bacteria, or a combination thereof, under anaerobic conditions. Fermentation in simple terms is the chemical conversion of sugars into ethanol...
sugar
Sugar
Sugar is a class of edible crystalline carbohydrates, mainly sucrose, lactose, and fructose, characterized by a sweet flavor.Sucrose in its refined form primarily comes from sugar cane and sugar beet...
s present in the dough
Dough
Dough is a paste made out of any cereals or leguminous crops by mixing flour with a small amount of water and/or other liquid. This process is a precursor to making a wide variety of foodstuffs, particularly breads and bread-based items , flatbreads, noodles, pastry, and similar items)...
into carbon dioxide
Carbon dioxide
Carbon dioxide is a naturally occurring chemical compound composed of two oxygen atoms covalently bonded to a single carbon atom...
and ethanol
Ethanol
Ethanol, also called ethyl alcohol, pure alcohol, grain alcohol, or drinking alcohol, is a volatile, flammable, colorless liquid. It is a psychoactive drug and one of the oldest recreational drugs. Best known as the type of alcohol found in alcoholic beverages, it is also used in thermometers, as a...
. Baker's yeast is of the species Saccharomyces cerevisiae
Saccharomyces cerevisiae
Saccharomyces cerevisiae is a species of yeast. It is perhaps the most useful yeast, having been instrumental to baking and brewing since ancient times. It is believed that it was originally isolated from the skin of grapes...
, which is the same species commonly used in alcoholic fermentation, and so is also called brewer's yeast.
The use of steamed or boiled potato
Potato
The potato is a starchy, tuberous crop from the perennial Solanum tuberosum of the Solanaceae family . The word potato may refer to the plant itself as well as the edible tuber. In the region of the Andes, there are some other closely related cultivated potato species...
es, water from potato boiling, or sugar in a bread dough provides food for the growth of yeasts, however, too much sugar will dehydrate them. Yeast is inhibited by both salt
Sodium chloride
Sodium chloride, also known as salt, common salt, table salt or halite, is an inorganic compound with the formula NaCl. Sodium chloride is the salt most responsible for the salinity of the ocean and of the extracellular fluid of many multicellular organisms...
and sugar, but more so with salt than sugar. Fat
Fat
Fats consist of a wide group of compounds that are generally soluble in organic solvents and generally insoluble in water. Chemically, fats are triglycerides, triesters of glycerol and any of several fatty acids. Fats may be either solid or liquid at room temperature, depending on their structure...
s such as butter
Butter
Butter is a dairy product made by churning fresh or fermented cream or milk. It is generally used as a spread and a condiment, as well as in cooking applications, such as baking, sauce making, and pan frying...
or eggs
Egg (food)
Eggs are laid by females of many different species, including birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish, and have probably been eaten by mankind for millennia. Bird and reptile eggs consist of a protective eggshell, albumen , and vitellus , contained within various thin membranes...
slow down yeast growth, however others say the effect of fat on dough remains unclear, presenting evidence that small amounts of fat are beneficial for baked bread volume.
Saccharomyces exiguus (also known as S. minor) is a wild yeast found on plants, fruits, and grains that is occasionally used for baking; it is not, however, generally used in a pure form, but comes from being propagated in a sourdough
Sourdough
Sourdough is a dough containing a Lactobacillus culture, usually in symbiotic combination with yeasts. It is one of two principal means of biological leavening in bread baking, along with the use of cultivated forms of yeast . It is of particular importance in baking rye-based breads, where yeast...
starter.
History
Flatbread
A flatbread is a simple bread made with flour, water, and salt and then thoroughly rolled into flattened dough. Many flatbreads are unleavened: made without yeast or sourdough culture: although some flatbread is made with yeast, such as pita bread....
s. It is generally assumed that the earliest forms of leavening were likely very similar to modern sourdough; the leavening action of yeast would have been discovered from its action on flatbread doughs, and would either have been cultivated separately or transferred from batch to batch by means of previously mixed ("old") dough. Alternatively, the development of leavened bread seems to have developed in close proximity to the development of beer
Beer
Beer is the world's most widely consumed andprobably oldest alcoholic beverage; it is the third most popular drink overall, after water and tea. It is produced by the brewing and fermentation of sugars, mainly derived from malted cereal grains, most commonly malted barley and malted wheat...
brewing, and barm
Barm
Barm cake is type of bun with flour on top. It has a characteristically strong flavour that comes from the traditional barm leaven made from a natural leaven with the addition of hops. However, the Barm Cake is more likely made from commercial yeast today....
from the beer fermentation process can also be used in bread making.
Without a full understanding of microbiology
Microbiology
Microbiology is the study of microorganisms, which are defined as any microscopic organism that comprises either a single cell , cell clusters or no cell at all . This includes eukaryotes, such as fungi and protists, and prokaryotes...
, early bakers would have had little ability to directly control yeast cultures, but still kept locally interesting cultures by reusing doughs and starters to leaven later batches. However, it became possible to isolate and propagate favored yeast strains in the same manner as was done in the beer industry, and it eventually became practical to propagate yeast in a slurry with a composition similar to beer wort
Wort (brewing)
Wort, , is the liquid extracted from the mashing process during the brewing of beer or whisky. Wort contains the sugars that will be fermented by the brewing yeast to produce alcohol.- Production :...
, usually including malted barley and wheat flour. Such cultures (sometimes referred to in old American cookery as "emptins", from their origins as the dregs of beer or cider fermentation) would become the ancestors of modern baker's yeast, as they generally were carefully maintained to avoid what would later be discovered to be bacterial contamination, including using preservatives such as hops
Hops
Hops are the female flower clusters , of a hop species, Humulus lupulus. They are used primarily as a flavoring and stability agent in beer, to which they impart a bitter, tangy flavor, though hops are also used for various purposes in other beverages and herbal medicine...
as well as boiling the growth medium.
In the 19th century, bread bakers obtained their yeast from beer brewers, and this led to sweet-fermented breads such as the Imperial "Kaiser-Semmel" roll, which generally lacked the sourness created by the acidification typical of Lactobacillus
Lactobacillus
Lactobacillus is a genus of Gram-positive facultative anaerobic or microaerophilic rod-shaped bacteria. They are a major part of the lactic acid bacteria group, named as such because most of its members convert lactose and other sugars to lactic acid. They are common and usually benign...
. However, beer brewers slowly switched from top-fermenting to bottom-fermenting yeast (both S. cerevisiae) and this created a shortage of yeast for making bread, so the Vienna Process
Vienna bread
Vienna bread is a type of bread that is produced from a process developed in Vienna, Austria, in the 19th century.The Vienna process in part used high milling of Hungarian grain, cereal press-yeast for leavening, and care and thought in the production process.-History:In the 19th century, for the...
was developed in 1846. While the innovation is often popularly credited for using steam in baking ovens leading to a different crust characteristic, it notably included procedures for high milling of grains (see Vienna grits), cracking them incrementally instead of mashing them with one pass; as well as better processes for growing and harvesting top-fermenting yeasts, this was known as press-yeast.
Refinements in microbiology following the work of Louis Pasteur
Louis Pasteur
Louis Pasteur was a French chemist and microbiologist born in Dole. He is remembered for his remarkable breakthroughs in the causes and preventions of diseases. His discoveries reduced mortality from puerperal fever, and he created the first vaccine for rabies and anthrax. His experiments...
led to more advanced methods of culturing pure strains. In 1879, Great Britain introduced specialized growing vats for the production of S. cerevisiae, and in the United States around the turn of the century centrifuges were used for concentrating the yeast, making modern commercial yeast possible, and turning yeast production into a major industrial endeavor. The slurry yeast made by small bakers and grocery shops became cream yeast, a suspension of live yeast cells in growth medium, and then compressed yeast, the fresh cake yeast that became the standard leaven for bread bakers in much of the Westernized world during the early 20th century.
During World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, Fleischmann's developed a granulated active dry yeast for the United States armed forces, which did not require refrigeration and had a longer shelf life and better temperature tolerance than fresh yeast; it is still the standard yeast for US military recipes. The company created yeast that would rise twice as fast, cutting down on baking time. Lesaffre
Red Star Yeast
Red Star Yeast Company, LLC is a joint-venture of Lesaffre Yeast Corporation, and Archer Daniels Midland Company.Red Star operates two plants in the United States- a plant in Headland, AL, and a new plant built in 2006 in Cedar Rapids, IA...
would later create instant yeast in the 1970s, which has gained considerable use and market share at the expense of both fresh and dry yeast in their various applications.
Types of baker's yeast
- Cream yeast is the closest form to the yeast slurries of the 19th century, being essentially a suspension of yeast cells in liquid, siphoned off from the growth medium. Its primary use is in industrial bakeries with special high-volume dispensing and mixing equipment, and it is not readily available to small bakeries or home cooks.
- Compressed yeast is essentially cream yeast with most of the liquid removed. It is a soft solid, beige in color, and arguably best known in the consumer form as small, foil-wrapped cubes of cake yeast. It is also available in larger-block form for bulk usage. It is highly perishable; though formerly widely available for the consumer market, it has become less common in supermarkets in some countries due to its poor keeping properties, having been superseded in some such markets by active dry and instant yeast. It is still widely available for commercial use, and is somewhat more tolerant of low temperatures than other forms of commercial yeast; however, even there, instant yeast has made significant market inroads.
- Active dry yeast is the form of yeast most commonly available to noncommercial bakers in the United States. It consists of coarse oblong granules of yeast, with live yeast cells encapsulated in a thick jacket of dry, dead cells with some growth medium. Under most conditions, active dry yeast must first be proofedProofing (baking technique)Proofing , as the term is used by professional bakers, is the final dough-rise step before baking, and refers to a specific rest period within the more generalized process known as fermentation...
or rehydrated. It can be stored at room temperature for a year, or frozen for more than a decade, which means that it has better keeping qualities than other forms, but it is generally considered more sensitive than other forms to thermal shock when actually used in recipes.
- Instant yeast appears similar to active dry yeast, but has smaller granules with substantially higher percentages of live cells per comparable unit volumes. It is more perishable than active dry yeast, but also does not require rehydration, and can usually be added directly to all but the driest doughs. Instant yeast generally has a small amount of ascorbic acidAscorbic acidAscorbic acid is a naturally occurring organic compound with antioxidant properties. It is a white solid, but impure samples can appear yellowish. It dissolves well in water to give mildly acidic solutions. Ascorbic acid is one form of vitamin C. The name is derived from a- and scorbutus , the...
added as a preservative. Some producers provide two or more forms of instant yeast in their product portfolio; for example, LeSaffre's "SAF Instant Gold" is designed specifically for doughs with high sugar contents. These are more generally known as osmotolerant yeasts. - Rapid-rise yeast is a variety of dried yeast (usually a form of instant yeast) that is of a smaller granular size, thus it dissolves faster in dough, and it provides greater carbon dioxide output to allow faster rising. There is considerable debate as to the value of such a product; while most baking experts believe it reduces the flavor potential of the finished product, Cook's IllustratedCook's IllustratedCook's Illustrated is an American cooking magazine published by America's Test Kitchen in Brookline, Massachusetts, every two months. It accepts no advertising and is characterized by extensive recipe testing and detailed instructions; the magazine also conducts thorough evaluations of kitchen...
magazine, among others, feels that at least for direct-rise recipes, it makes little difference. Rapid-rise yeast is often marketed specifically for use in bread machineBread machineA bread making machine or bread maker is a home appliance for baking bread. It consists of a bread pan with a paddle mounted in the center of a small special-purpose oven, with a control panel...
s.
For most commercial uses, yeast of any form is packaged in bulk (blocks or freezer bags for fresh yeast; vacuum-packed brick bags for dry or instant); however, yeast for home use is often packaged in pre-measured doses, either small squares for compressed yeast or sealed packets for dry or instant. For active dry and instant yeast, a single dose (reckoned for the average bread recipe of between 500 g and 1000 g of dough) is generally about 2.5 tsp
Teaspoon
A teaspoon, an item of cutlery, is a small spoon, commonly part of a silverware place setting, suitable for stirring and sipping the contents of a cup of tea or coffee...
(~12 mL) or about 7 g (1/4 ounce), though comparatively lesser amounts are used when the yeast is used in a pre-ferment. A yeast flavor in the baked bread is generally not noticeable when the bakers' percent
Baker percentage
Baker's percentage is a baker's notation method indicating the flour-relative proportion of ingredients used when making breads, cakes, muffins, and other pastries. It is also referred to as baker's math, or otherwise contextually indicated by a phrase such as based on flour weight...
of added yeast is less than 2.5.
Use in research
Because it is readily available and easy to culture, baker's yeast has long been used in chemical, biological, and genetic research. In 1996, after 6 years of work, S. cerevisiae became the first eukaryoteEukaryote
A eukaryote is an organism whose cells contain complex structures enclosed within membranes. Eukaryotes may more formally be referred to as the taxon Eukarya or Eukaryota. The defining membrane-bound structure that sets eukaryotic cells apart from prokaryotic cells is the nucleus, or nuclear...
to have its entire genome
Genome
In modern molecular biology and genetics, the genome is the entirety of an organism's hereditary information. It is encoded either in DNA or, for many types of virus, in RNA. The genome includes both the genes and the non-coding sequences of the DNA/RNA....
sequenced
Genetic sequencing
Genetic Sequencing may refer to:* DNA sequencing* Full genome sequencing...
. It has over 12 million base pair
Base pair
In molecular biology and genetics, the linking between two nitrogenous bases on opposite complementary DNA or certain types of RNA strands that are connected via hydrogen bonds is called a base pair...
s and around 6000 gene
Gene
A gene is a molecular unit of heredity of a living organism. It is a name given to some stretches of DNA and RNA that code for a type of protein or for an RNA chain that has a function in the organism. Living beings depend on genes, as they specify all proteins and functional RNA chains...
s. Since then it has remained on the forefront of genetic research. For example, most of our knowledge of the cell division cycle was worked out from experiments with yeast.
Baker's yeast contains enzyme
Enzyme
Enzymes are proteins that catalyze chemical reactions. In enzymatic reactions, the molecules at the beginning of the process, called substrates, are converted into different molecules, called products. Almost all chemical reactions in a biological cell need enzymes in order to occur at rates...
s which can reduce
Reducing agent
A reducing agent is the element or compound in a reduction-oxidation reaction that donates an electron to another species; however, since the reducer loses an electron we say it is "oxidized"...
a carbonyl
Carbonyl
In organic chemistry, a carbonyl group is a functional group composed of a carbon atom double-bonded to an oxygen atom: C=O. It is common to several classes of organic compounds, as part of many larger functional groups....
group into a hydroxyl
Hydroxyl
A hydroxyl is a chemical group containing an oxygen atom covalently bonded with a hydrogen atom. In inorganic chemistry, the hydroxyl group is known as the hydroxide ion, and scientists and reference works generally use these different terms though they refer to the same chemical structure in...
group in fairly high yield, thus making it a useful bio-reagent in chemical syntheses. It is known to reduce organometallic carbonyl compounds in very high yield.
Baker's yeast can also be used to produce ethanol via fermentation for use in chemical synthesis, although doing so in some places requires permits.