When I tell folks that many of Zingerman's breads are made without the addition of commercial yeast, they give me a bit of strange look. To many of them, bread without yeast is unimaginable. "Must be . . . matzoh," I've heard more than once. But there's a difference between matzoh-which is unleavened bread, and leavened bread made without the addition of packaged, commercial yeast.
"But can you really make bread without commercial yeast?" you might wonder.
Sure you can. That's the way everyone made it up until commercial yeast was invented in the second half of the 19th century. In fact, bread was made for a long time without adding what we now know as commercial yeast. Some of the best breads in the world-like Lionel Poilane's bread in Paris or a properly prepared San Francisco style sourdough-are "unyeasted" breads. And so too are the majority of the breads we make at Zingerman's.
Not only is baking bread without commercial yeast not new, it's actually incredibly old: bread was being baked without commercial yeast by the Egyptians about 4,500 years ago. Some unnamed baker discovered that by leaving the usual flour and water mixture to sit for awhile before baking, the dough would ferment. And as a natural outgrowth of the fermentation process (the release of carbon dioxide), the bread would rise, and become higher and lighter. In time, the Egyptians came to bake dozens of different breads, all using some variation on this basic fermentation process.
Adding packaged yeast is a relatively modern invention, which has been something of a mixed blessing when it comes to the quality and flavor of bread. Now, yeast, in and of itself, doesn't have to be a bad thing. But, in the wrong hands, or in unnecessarily large quantities, yeast has become, well, . . . a rising problem (pun intended) in modern bread baking. In a hurry to turn their bread in and out of the oven, commercial bakers have used more and more yeast to speed up the otherwise leisurely pace of the natural rising process. After all, time is money! In a matter of an hour or two, heavily yeasted breads can move from the mixer to the bench to the oven. Saves time, cuts costs. But what this technique gains in time, it loses in flavor, texture, integrity, and shelf life. The bread may still look okay. But who wants to eat a bread just for its looks? We want to bake bread that tastes as good as-no, check that-even better than it looks.
How do you bake bread without adding commercial yeast?
You simply rely on a natural sour cultures, wild yeast spores in the air, and on time. The natural sour culture flavors the bread, attracts wild yeasts in the air, and starts the natural fermentation process. This in turn creates carbon dioxide, which in turn raises the bread. (Ever see a vat of beer fermenting? All that foam at the top? Similar scenario here.)
Working with less yeast does take more time. Time-the same time that commercial bakers were trying to save by adding more yeast-is an essential component in baking the kind of full-flavored breads we're after at Zingerman's. It's also one of the biggest costs. Time is money. To make a loaf of Zingerman's Farm Bread is a process that takes about eighteen hours. Time and a good sour starter allow nature to do in the course of a day what industrial yeast can do in a couple of hours.
The downside of working this way is that you need more patience, more time, and your costs go up. But the advantages are evident where we think they count the most-in the bread.
Why We Like Breads Made With Less Yeast
More flavor! Although the process is longer and more complex, the breads themselves are much more flavorful. By giving the dough time to develop properly and naturally, it develops the depth of flavor that heavily yeasted breads don't have. Instead of tasting of yeast, the bread's flavor will grow slowly out of the taste of the grain and of the character of the natural sour starter.
More aroma! Smell Zingerman's breads and you'll note a fresh, pleasant, aroma of the grains. The rye breads smell of rye, and of their natural sour. The wheat bread of wheat. The breads baked with sour starters have a pleasant sourness. None of them smell of yeast. There is a big difference.
Longer life! Less yeast means a dough with more substance, not puffed up with unnecessary air. And consequently, these breads last for days stored on the counter. NOT in plastic. NOT in the refrigerator. I've done this myself many, many times over the last few months. Simply leave a loaf of our bread on your kitchen counter, cut-side down, either unwrapped or perhaps in a paper bag. You'll find that two, three, even four days later, the bread is still great. Drier certainly. But often, actually more flavorful than it was on day one. Little staling, no molding, no plastic. (Once again, we find, there was life before Zip-Loc baggies!)
How can you spot a heavily yeasted bread?
The first sign that a bread is heavily yeasted will be in the aroma. It will smell like yeast. If you've never smelled it-or perhaps weren't aware that the aroma in question was caused by excess yeast-let me tell you: it's not pleasant. But other than yeast, there'll be little else there. Because heavily yeasted breads rise so quickly, there is little time for the natural development of the bread's flavor. Good bread, on the other hand, should be pleasantly perfumed, smelling of the grain from which it was made, with a bit of the sour in the background.
The second sign is dryness (though this can also come from overbaking). When lots of yeast is used, it acts quickly to raise the dough by puffing it up with lots of air. And in the process of filling the loaf with air, the yeast inevitably, if unintentionally, dries out the bread.
The third sign is quick staling. Most of us are so accustomed to this that we assume it's OK. Well in it isn't. Heavily yeasted bread stales quickly because, as I mentioned above, it is filled with air. And the more air in the bread, the less integrity there is to the loaf, and the quicker it dries out. In an effort to avoid the staling so common with overly yeasty commercial breads many of us have resorted to freezing it (a viable option), to putting it in plastic (not good for most good bread), or refrigerating it (the worst of the three). A good bread made without commercial yeast should last for days; in fact we find that though they may get a bit drier many of our are actually more flavorful after a few days.
A fourth sign is molding. Because yeast is a natural fungus, which encourages mold growth in the "right" (or should I say, "wrong") environment, heavily yeasted breads are prone to molding. Storing bread in plastic bags only compounds the problem-it traps air and moisture in with the loaf and leads, inevitably, to trouble.
The fifth, and in the end most meaningful sign to those of us who like to eat good bread, is that heavily yeasted breads lack flavor and character. Because the dough rises so quickly there is little chance for it to develop the kind of flavor a good bread ought to have. Consequently, heavily yeasted breads may have a pleasing texture, but their flavor is dependent primarily on yeast, and at times, on the addition of sugar. If you think about it this isn't much different than what you'd expect with many other foods made using fermentation. When you rush wine, vinegar, cheese or beer to fruition, you do save money. But while what you get is inexpensive, it's also relatively bland and flavorless. Most of the best cheeses, wines, and the lot take time to make. The same is true for the best breads. Most of ours take upwards of eight-often as long as eighteen-hours before they're ready to head into the oven. Plenty of time to develop full flavor without having to resort to industrial shortcuts like sugar or shortening.
For all of these reasons, we have chosen to make Zingerman's breads using more traditional techniques, baking them with either little yeast, or none at all!
Yeast-To Add Or Not To Add?
Now, mind you, I'm not saying that yeast itself is a terrible thing. Just that when it's used without care, the resulting breads will be lacking in flavor and character. At Zingerman's we bake both yeasted and unyeasted breads. Only the work of the natural sour starters (which catch the wild yeasts in the air) raise the loaves of Zingerman's Farm Bread, Pecan Raisin and Sourdough. But where we do use yeast we work to use significantly less. In our Sicilian Sesame Semolina bread for example, we use about as much yeast to raise 150 loaves as the average home baker uses to raise two or three! All the Jewish breads-rye, pumpernickel and all the variations thereof-are baked with a combination of a natural sour and added yeast. But again, much less yeast than in most commercial preparations.
Many people on "yeast free" diets can often enjoy Zingerman's unyeasted breads. Ask your doctor for advice.