Beautiful Bread
Yeast! The English once called it “godes good,” believing it was a demonstration of God’s kindness. Yeast earned its place of respect because, for thousands of years, it was the invisible workhorse that fermented our fruits and grains to make wine, beer, and sake, and that quickly brought life to an otherwise inert dough of flour and water.
Yeast thrives on sugar, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide as waste products. What good luck is that? Farmers recognized yeast’s usefulness very early in the history of plant domestication and farming. One of the most robust of the wild sugar-loving yeasts, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, became so central to fermenting activities that it migrated from nature into our homes. Like cats, yeast is a semi-domesticated organism. This means that while the yeast that’s around our houses, and in and on our persons, has changed somewhat from its wild ancestor, they’re still very similar.
“Yeast” comes from Middle English “yest,” meaning foam or froth. If you add 1 teaspoon of yeast and a similar amount of sugar to ¼ cup of warm water and leave
