216. Where does Yeast come From? The microscopic plants which we call yeast are widely distributed in the air, and float around there until chance brings them in contact with a substance favorable to their growth, such as fruit juices and moist warm batter. Under the favorable conditions of abundant moisture, heat, and food, they grow and multiply rapidly, and cause the phenomenon of fermentation. Wild yeast settles on the skin of grapes and apples, but since it does not have access to the fruit juices within, it remains inactive very much as a seed does before it is planted. But when the fruit is crushed, the yeast plants get into the juice, and feeding on it, grow and multiply. The stray yeast plants which get into the sirup are relatively few, and hence fermentation is slow; it requires several weeks for currant wine to ferment, and several months for the juice of grapes to be converted into wine. Stray yeast finds a favorable soil for growth in the warmth and moisture of a batter; but although the number of these stray plants is very large, it is insufficient to cause rapid fermentation, and if we depended upon wild yeast for bread raising, the result would not be to our liking. When our remote ancestors saved a pinch of dough as leaven for the next baking, they were actually cultivating yeast, although they did not know it. The reserved portion served as a favorable breeding place to the yeast plants within it; they grew and reproduced amazingly, and became so numerous, that the small mass of old dough in which they were gathered served to leaven the entire batch at the next baking. As soon as man learned that yeast plants caused fermentation in liquors and bread, he realized that it would be to his advantage to cultivate yeast and to add it to bread and to plant juices rather than to depend upon accidental and slow fermentation from wild yeast. Shortly after the discovery of yeast in the nineteenth century, man commenced his attempt to cultivate the tiny organisms. Their microscopic size added greatly to his trouble, and it was only after years of careful and tedious investigation that he was able to perfect the commercial yeast cakes and yeast brews universally used by bakers and brewers. The well-known compressed yeast cake is simply a mass of live and vigorous yeast plants, embedded in a soft, soggy material, and ready to grow and multiply as soon as they are placed under proper conditions of heat, moisture, and food. Seeds which remain on our shelves do not germinate, but those which are planted in the soil do; so it is with the yeast plants. While in the cake they are as lifeless as the seed; when placed in dough, or fruit juice, or grain water, they grow and multiply and cause fermentation. CHAPTER XXII BLEACHING