Does anybody know about yeast?

[Speicher]

Making bread can be a real pain in the bum, or is that Pita for short?

 

[vernon]

Now you're just looking up lists of bread types on wikipedia to find puns.

Anyway what I like skol said is correct. You need to activate yeast in warm water with sugar and wait for it to go frothy before you use it.

Then when you've made the dough you leave it somewhere WARM to rise and you leave it there for AGES.

Nope. some of us are well bread and have extensive vocabularies.

 

[vernon]

Making bread can be a real pain in the bum, or is that Pita for short?

Didn't you mean a pain in the buns?

 

[Speicher]

Doh, yes of course I did.

Iced buns at this time of year.

 

[Aperitif]

Now you're just looking up lists of bread types on wikipedia to find puns.

Anyway what I like skol said is correct. You need to activate yeast in warm water with sugar and wait for it to go frothy before you use it.

Then when you've made the dough you leave it somewhere WARM to rise and you leave it there for AGES.

Some people like to jezston here - where there's space so to do...

 

[scots_lass]

Yeast does go 'off' but I'm not sure how long it takes. Less than a year I think.........

 

[Svendo]

This is what I've learned from baking bread for the last 6 or so years, in which time I've probably paid for about a dozen prebaked loaves (not counting baguettes and on holiday).
Yeast does go off as others have said. Fresh Yeast lasts 3-10 days in the fridge, 3 months if frozen and defrosted. Dried yeast that needs activating lasts a lot longer, but not indefinitely. Dried active yeast, in the 6 or 7 gramme packets also lasts ages. When it has gone off it doesn't all die at once, but it can take it a lot longer to reproduce enough new cells of create enough fermentation to get your bread going ( i.e. get a froth on your starter for fresh or dried yeast.) Once you have got it going, or if using not-stale dried active yeast, your bread can be dead quick; prove in an hour rise in 40 minutes, if left in warm place. In fact you have to be careful not to over do it because then you risk creating more gas than your gluten/kneading can cope with and you get a hollow loaf with a big bubble in the middle or a 'flying crust' where there's a big bubble below the crust. There's a lot for adjusting the temperature to as low and long as possible as more flavour develops the slower the bread proves and rises, but this takes a bit of trial and error and luck.
Sourdough on the other hand is quite fickle. My starter which I captured in my kitchen about 6 years ago comes and goes, sometimes it's as quick as commercial yeast, other times it's soooo slow and the bread comes out a bit dense and heavy. Always tastes nice though, and toasting masks most bread making difficulties.

 

[Aperitif]

Nice post Svendo. Of course, some pictures of your fresh-baked bread would enhance the imagination! (we'll work on the tasting when the Summer Rides season starts!)

 

[Andy in Sig]

Having read all the replies, I've come to the conclusion that it was a partially dead population in the little packet. The French stick experiment was, due to its disproportionate amount of oil, inedible and so I put it on the balcony for the birds yesterday. They didn't notice it until this morning which ordinarily would have been fine but it was -20 deg C last night and so it was a bit like ferroconcrete when they got round to it. So I broke it into even smaller pieces (no easy task!) and watched five blackbirds and two sparrows scrapping over it. The raisin bread is edible although a bit dry due to me not putting butter in (it was in the recipe but I didn't notice it). I did however bung some cinnamon in which makes it OK. It's not bad with a bit of orange marmalade on it. Lessons learned: use young vigorous yeast, slow down and read the recipe properly and if you must halve the quantities make sure you do it for all ingredients!

 

[Davidc]

Back to the OP

Yes Andy, yeast does die off with time. The dried stuff lasts longest, the live version kept in the fridge not too long.

The way to use older yest, in which there is some still alive, is to make up a solution of sugar and lemon juice in water (about 10g sugar 10ml lemon juice and 150ml water works well), using warm water 30 deg C or warm to the finger. Put the yeast in and leave it for about 12 hours, after which if there's some live yeast you'll have a froth and a beery scent. Just use the resulting muddy looking brew as a part of the water in the dough recipe.

 

[Speicher]

Having read all the replies, I've come to the conclusion that it was a partially dead population in the little packet. The French stick experiment was, due to its disproportionate amount of oil, inedible and so I put it on the balcony for the birds yesterday. They didn't notice it until this morning which ordinarily would have been fine but it was -20 deg C last night and so it was a bit like ferroconcrete when they got round to it. So I broke it into even smaller pieces (no easy task!) and watched five blackbirds and two sparrows scrapping over it. The raisin bread is edible although a bit dry due to me not putting butter in (it was in the recipe but I didn't notice it). I did however bung some cinnamon in which makes it OK. It's not bad with a bit of orange marmalade on it. Lessons learned: use young vigorous yeast, slow down and read the recipe properly and if you must halve the quantities make sure you do it for all ingredients!

I made some bread once, and used wrong quantities and the result was bread bearing a close ressemblance to a brick. But I took the chance of it improving as the main ingredient for Bread and Butter pudding. Success!