What Are Yeast Breads?
By Amrita Chuasiriporn
Yeast breads are some of the most common types of bread that people eat every day. While many other ingredients may be involved in their production, yeast breads always require some sort of flour, liquid and a little bit of salt. Salt not only adds flavor, but helps control the yeast. Liquid may be provided by water, milk, juice, or fruit puree. Richer yeast breads, like cinnamon rolls, usually require milk, butter and eggs.
About Yeast
There are several strains of yeast, but yeast used in baking is part of the family Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Ideally, it’s alive when you begin mixing bread dough, and stays alive until the heat of baking kills it. It can survive in very cold temperatures, although its metabolism slows; that’s why you can store yeast in the freezer if you don’t use it regularly. Yeast, like other living creatures, needs to eat to survive. It loves sugar, and warm environments. Ingredients like flour, sugar, salt, water, milk and butter all help feed yeast — which, in turn, makes yeast breads rise.
Proofing
Proofing is another word for rising, and refers to the fact that the yeast is proving that it is alive, and has not expired. It does this by eating its way through the natural sugars in your bread dough, then expelling gasses as the dough ferments. These gasses are what cause yeast breads to rise, and why yeast breads rise more quickly in a warm, humid environment. If bread overproofs, it will start to collapse — and you’ll notice a vaguely alcoholic smell coming from the deflated mound of dough. This isn’t surprising, as yeast also is used in beer production, and fermentation is involved in both processes.
Finished Product
When you slice open a loaf of yeast bread or tear into a bun baked with yeast, you’ll see thousands of little tiny holes in the interior surface of the bread. In some commercially baked breads, these holes will be almost completely uniform. In homemade and artisanal breads, these holes are usually varied in size. These are the pockets where each granule of yeast emitted gas and caused the bread to rise. As it baked in the oven, all that yeast died — leaving behind a delicious legacy known as yeast bread.
Other Bread Types
Yeast is only one way to raise a bread, and it requires making dough that incorporates the yeast in its recipe. Chemical leavening is another way. Baking powder and baking soda are both considered chemical leaveners, and are what is used to make quick breads — breads that rely on batter rather than dough recipes. Banana and zucchini are two examples of this type of bread. Flatbreads, depending on the recipe, may or may not require leavening. For example, some pita bread recipes use yeast, while others do not. Some cracker recipes use baking powder or baking soda, while others do not. Indian flatbreads like roti and chapati do not typically require the addition of any type of leavener.