Yeast Products

In its simplest form, bread is nothing more than a dough of flour and water, leavened by yeast and baked. In fact, some hard-crusted French breads contain only these ingredients, plus salt. Other kinds of bread contain additional ingredients, including sugar, shortening, milk, eggs, and flavorings. But flour, water, and yeast are still the basic building blocks of all breads.

Yet for something that seems so simple, bread can be one of the most exacting and complex products to make. Success in bread making depends largely on your understanding of two basic principles: gluten development, which we discussed in the previous chapter, and yeast fermentation, which we have touched on and which we study in greater detail here.