What’s the yeast doing inside my bread?
CrowdScience
BBC
4.8 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 21 August 2020
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
If you’re one of the millions of people who used lockdown to try something new like baking sourdough bread, you may well be wondering what’s happening chemically inside your loaf, especially if the end result keeps changing. Well, you’re not alone. Listeners Soheil and Sean are both keen bakers but want to know more about the thing that makes bread rise: yeast. What is yeast? Where does it come from and can you catch it? And how hard is it to ‘make’ yourself? Soon after lockdown took effect, commercial supplies of the stuff disappeared from supermarket shelves across the globe.
The shortage also affected brewers the world over. A big fan of yeast in most of its forms, Marnie Chesterton took on the challenge of creating her own. She talks to the brewers who hunt rare strains to create the perfect beer, and hears from the biologist who says these amazing microbes, used for thousands of years, could be used to make food production more sustainable. And she discovers how this simple ingredient could be instrumental in the fight against climate change. Presented by Marnie Chesterton and Produced by Marijke Peters for the BBC World Service.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Take some time for yourself with soothing classical music from the mindful mix, the Science of |
| 0:07.0 | Happiness Podcast. |
| 0:08.0 | For the last 20 years I've dedicated my career to exploring the science of living a happier more meaningful life and I want |
| 0:14.4 | to share that science with you. |
| 0:16.1 | And just one thing, deep calm with Michael Mosley. |
| 0:19.4 | I want to help you tap in to your hidden relaxation response system and open the door to that |
| 0:25.4 | calmer place within. Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:30.7 | Stillfully, I close in on my prey I can see it. |
| 0:40.0 | Hello and welcome to crowd science from the BBC World Service. I'm Marnie Chesterton. |
| 0:45.0 | Ten foot above me is a ripe fig and I'm just going to pick it. |
| 0:54.0 | First, you have to pick your fruit and anything will do. You just want something with sugar in it. |
| 1:00.0 | But I'm not here for the figs. |
| 1:05.0 | Anything that has this fine white powder on the surface. |
| 1:08.3 | I'm here for the lesser spotted life form that's hopefully living on its surface. |
| 1:17.0 | So you take your fruit, either dried or fresh, and add it to equal parts, flower and water in a jar. |
| 1:24.0 | And that should form a very loose dough inside of your jar. |
| 1:30.0 | Next you want to store your jar loosely covered in a warm place in your kitchen. |
| 1:35.6 | After about 12 or 24 hours, depending on how warm your favorite spot is, that whole thing will |
| 1:41.1 | turn into a lovely bub lovely mess inside the jar and you have just cultivated wild east |
| 1:48.6 | Which I've learned is everywhere including I hope on the fig tree in my back garden. |
| 1:54.4 | Normally if I want to bake some bread or make pizza dough, |
| 1:57.4 | I'd just buy a packet of yeast from the local shop. |
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