February 22, 2015 - 1:12am
Regards Yeast and Gluten
Hello members, I had tow basic question but after lot of searching could not get a clear picture so thought to ask here
(a) Normally every bread recipe says to use sugar to activate yeast. Is sugar really needed, can the yeast feed on flour itself? If we do not use sugar, will the activation be slow or no activation will happen?
(b) In Puff pastry I have seen chefs using vinegar/lemon juice etc to form gluten faster. Here for bread we knead the dough longer to form gluten so can we put some acid to get the gluten formed earlier, will this work here??
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Hi,
(a) Commercial yeast nor the yeasts in natural starters need sugar. The yeasts eat sugars broken out of the starch in flour by enzymes naturally present or added in the form of diastatic malt. Sugar may increase the activity of yeast but is not necessary especially if you are using a slow fermentation formula for your bread.
(b) Gluten is a combination of two proteins forming the elastic structural backbone in bread. Any acidic medium can speed up the process. In bread the traditional way to form gluten was to knead using the action to bring the proteins together. The process can also be done by simply hydrating flour and letting the mass sit for 20- 30 minutes to activate the proteins then gently stretching several times.
Both the sugar for the yeast and the vinegar for the gluten are used to speed up natural processes and not necessarily conducive to making good bread especially if your going to use little or no enrichments (sugar, milk, oil, or eggs).
Stu