The Effect Yeast and Baking Powder has on Bread

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. Breads have been around for thousands of years and the methods of cooking them change as the years progress. Two of the two most common methods of making bread rise are using yeast and baking powder. Often the tastes of the breads stay the same, but the size may differ. If I use yeast in baking bread, than it will rise better than baking powder. Louis Pasteur discovered how yeast works in 1859. Yeast feeds on the starches in flour, producing a gas called carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide then grows the gluten proteins in the flour. Gluten is responsible for the elasticity of kneeded dough. The gluten proteins cause the dough to expand and rise and most commonly double in size and sometimes more. The main purpose of yeast is to act as a catalyst in fermentation and speed up the process in making bread rise. Yeast is a single-celled microorganism and fungi in soil, on plants and in the air. Over six hundred species of yeast have been discovered; however, cooking yeast is made from the genus and species of yeast called saccharomyces cerevisiae. Yeast can be produced from a single yeast cell. The first step uses a strong microscope to select one healthy yeast cell. The cell is planted in a container, which contains everything needed to make yeast grow. Then the yeast cell reproduces, by multiplying itself. The yeast has multiplies into a small mass of pure cells. Then you put it in a liquid called wort. Wort is a nutrient containing molasses or any carbohydrate source, vitamins, and minerals. When the yeast cells have increased many times fermentation begins. The yeast cells are placed in more wort so that they continuously grow. As the yeast cells grow, they are moved to even larger tanks. The last tank can be as high as a multi-story building, and can hold up to sixty thousand gallons. By the time the yeast is ready to be harvested, it will have

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