Project Essay - Bread

Agnes Szakacs

05/20/15

Period 2/3

Essay

What happens when you make sourdough bread? What is the chemistry behind it? I have gotten to know the answer to this question by making this experiment. The experiment was for me to observe how bread rises. During this experiment I learned a lot.

I had to learn about yeast before trying out this experiment. What is yeast? Yeast is a fungus, which makes it like a mushroom and mold. The yeast is made up of 73% water, and 13% protein. I also learned that when yeast is in contact with warm water and sugar the yeast comes to life and fests on the sugar. I have gotten my research from recipes, cooking websites, websites and presentations about yeast. My hypothesis was, when finding this out, that if yeast is a huge part of the bread processes then the yeast was the reason why the bread was rising.

To test this hypothesis out was I started out making bread and sourdough bread. For the bread I had to mix the ingredients together, white and wheat flour, warm water, milk, sugar, salt and yeast. Then I let it sit for 1 hour and 30 minutes, after that it was twice as large. Then I heat up the bread, and had to bake it for 30 minutes while covered and 10 minutes uncovered. My hypothesis was correct. The result was that the bread did rise, and it tasted great. I did the same thing with the sourdough, but I kept on feeding it and mixing it with new amounts of yeast for 5 days. Then I baked the sourdough, I got the same results on that as well.