[Sca-cooks] Arts and Sciences; bread

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Mar 31, 2009, at 5:39 PM, Johnna Holloway wrote:

> I use a dry yeast and a bottle of ale when I make these sorts
> of recipes.
>
> Johnnae

I'd tend to agree that active dry yeast (which, remember, is still an  
active yeast culture which, when moistened, is no longer dry) is a  
perfectly good source of the same yeast you'd get from a top- 
fermenting ale. And given the percentage of non-yeast ale-related  
chemicals found in the aggregate dough mass once you use it for bread,  
the finished product probably shouldn't taste particularly like beer

I'm not sure that adding even the bottle of ale is, strictly speaking,  
necessary to get the effect. Either way, the yeasts are still going to  
be breaking down a little of the starches and sugars found in the  
flour, and producing much the same metabolic byproducts.

Adamantius, sticking his two-cent oar in...