Yeast, Bread, And Chemistry

Now today has been rather rough; i cut my finger at The Tech Center. I blame physics and my accident prone self. However, i didn't freak-out about it, even after i found out i had to go get stitches. Actually i was straight up annoyed because i didn't get to cook my Veggie Burger! LAME. The Only real painful part was when the doctor injected the numbing medicine into my finger. It was like a bee was stinging me, but the stinger was made of fire and death. I'm just glad it was the Center's knife and not mine. I have a Shun brand french [aka chef's] knife so basically if i were using that i would have probably cut much deeper, practically to the bone. So Glad that wasn't the case.

I'm feeling rather scientific at the moment; I decided to answer a very common question in the culinary world. Why the heck does yeast make bread rise?!
The answer is quite simple and scientific, and yes, something can be scientific and still be simple.

First off, many people are confused about what yeast really is. Yeast is a fungus. MMM now ain't that just so appetizing? The type of yeast most commonly used is a budding yeast named Saccharomyces Cerevisiae. I'll refer to it as SC for short.

Now SC lives a very simple life, its one and only objective is to intake sugars and starches for nutrients. As a result, SC releases Carbon Dioxide [aka CO2] as a byproduct.

So when a yeast bread dough left to rise SC is producing more and more CO2 which in return get trapped inside of the dough. The build up of the Carbon Dioxide is what makes the bread rise.

An important thing to remember is to always let yeast breads rise in a warm place because heat allows SC to pass gas faster. This is also why bread continues to rise throughout the baking process process because the heat of the oven sets SC into turbo mode.

Well that's my little science lesson for today! Hope you enjoyed my random knowledge!