Quotation from: General Science

Written by: Bertha M. Clark


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.

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