Bread wasn’t always as easy to bake as it is now. Bread gets its airy structure by capturing gas bubbles in the elastic gluten of wheat. But how does one get those gas bubbles into the dough to begin with? The answer is leavening.
Throughout history, most households kept a crock of leavening in a warm corner of their kitchen. A small portion of this soft, dough-like substance was used to start each new lot of bread dough. The rest was replenished with water and flour and kept, sometimes for generations.
If a housewife neglected her leavening, it might cease to rise and turn into a vile smelling, pink slime. In that case, she threw it wout and either borrowed a bit of leavening from a neighor or began a new batch by setting out a crock of water mixed with flour and hoping that it would begin to produce foam. Some women knew that adding the husks of stone ground wheat would often hasten the process.
Leavening was used in bread and cake batters. Often, a dose of beer or wine dregs was also added.
What those housewives had been collecting and tending in their flour and water filled crocks were living organisms, wild yeasts that lived in the air, but settled into the crocks and multiplied, eating the starch and expelling carbon dioxide. Wild yeasts were also present in the wheat husks and beer and wine dregs.
It wasn’t until the late 1860s, when Louis Pasteur placed some leavening under a microscope, that anyone realized this.
Shortly after that, scientists began to isolate yeast in pure culture form. By the turn of the 20th century, they had created a way to dry it, thereby forcing it into dormancy. No longer did housewives need to replenish the leavening crock every few days!
Commercial baker’s yeast much like what you buy in red and yellow packets or glass jars in the supermarket soon followed.
Tommorow, look at my blog for a recipe for an old fashioned bread that uses new fangled commercial yeast.
Throughout history, most households kept a crock of leavening in a warm corner of their kitchen. A small portion of this soft, dough-like substance was used to start each new lot of bread dough. The rest was replenished with water and flour and kept, sometimes for generations.
If a housewife neglected her leavening, it might cease to rise and turn into a vile smelling, pink slime. In that case, she threw it wout and either borrowed a bit of leavening from a neighor or began a new batch by setting out a crock of water mixed with flour and hoping that it would begin to produce foam. Some women knew that adding the husks of stone ground wheat would often hasten the process.
Leavening was used in bread and cake batters. Often, a dose of beer or wine dregs was also added.
What those housewives had been collecting and tending in their flour and water filled crocks were living organisms, wild yeasts that lived in the air, but settled into the crocks and multiplied, eating the starch and expelling carbon dioxide. Wild yeasts were also present in the wheat husks and beer and wine dregs.
It wasn’t until the late 1860s, when Louis Pasteur placed some leavening under a microscope, that anyone realized this.
Shortly after that, scientists began to isolate yeast in pure culture form. By the turn of the 20th century, they had created a way to dry it, thereby forcing it into dormancy. No longer did housewives need to replenish the leavening crock every few days!
Commercial baker’s yeast much like what you buy in red and yellow packets or glass jars in the supermarket soon followed.
Tommorow, look at my blog for a recipe for an old fashioned bread that uses new fangled commercial yeast.
