Ingredient spotlight: yeast

Does yeast scare you?

Do you start to break out in a cold sweat when you read the sentence “dissolve the packet of yeast in warm water”?

Have you never attempted to make bread from scratch because of your phobia?

Do you love fresh baked bread?

Do you sometimes wear pink high heels when you bake…just because?

If you answered yes to any of the above questions this post is for you.

Here’s the good news! Yeast doesn’t have to scare you anymore. It really doesn’t. Soon, you too, can become a yeast-using-bread-baking-pizza-dough-flippin’ guru.

Say that ten times fast!

So, there are two secrets to success. Just two! They’re important though, so listen up.

1. Make sure your water (or milk) is at one hundred degrees farenheight. If need be, use a thermometer to make sure, but if it feels like bubble bath temperature, you’re usually good.

2. DON’T LET YOUR SALT GET NEAR YOUR YEAST.

I feel quite passionate about the latter because I made that mistake once….and it scarred me for life. You see, I was just an innocent culinary student working hard to bake the perfect loaf of bread for my final practical exam. I knew salt and yeast shouldn’t touch, but somehow that slipped my mind as I cranked up the Kitchen Aid and dumped my ingredients in the shiny metal bowl.

Everything was going so well….but then my bread didn’t rise. Like, at all. When I brought it up to Chef at the end of the evening he looked at the bread, looked up at me and said eat it.

So I did. And it tasted like nasty salt bread.

You see, salt kills yeast so if the two ingredients touch at all (before the actual mixing stage), you’ll be left with a loaf of flat salty bread…like me. It’s pretty easy to avoid this problem though. Just bury the salt in with the flour and you’ll be good to go.

Hope I didn’t scare you. I really didn’t mean it! You’re going to be great at this bread baking thing. I just know it!

I’m off to hobble around my kitchen now.

Try this and this while I’m gone!