Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Yeast

Episode Date: February 13, 2023

Alex Schmidt and Katie Goldin explore why yeast is secretly incredibly fascinating.Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode. And hang out with us on the new SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/wbR96nsGg5

Yeast. Known for being flaky. Famous for being bakey. Nobody thinks much about it, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why yeast is secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode, a podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone. I'm joined by my co-host, Katie Golden. Katie, hello. How are you?

Hello. I'm here. Good. That's the plan. And boy, this is the first taping after officially announcing to people that all of these amazing things are happening, that Katie's here and I'm maximum fun. And also the Discord has been very fun. I figured out how to make like a permanent invite link. Shout out to Danny, I'm maximum fun for helping me. So there's a permanent invite link in the description of this. Please join the Discord. It's free to everybody. There'll be some specific channels for members, but come hang out. Yeah, nice. How many emojis does it have though? Oh, I, yeah, I haven't smithed any new ones. I haven't forged any new ones,

but I am enjoying what's out there. And I'm liking people putting bisons up. That's always good. I'm going to get in there. I'm going to forge some emojis. There will just be sparks coming out of my computer later, but it's the hammer. It's the emoji hammer hitting the emoji anvil. And speaking of people who support this show, today's topic is amazing to me because thank you to Stephen Rischert for suggesting the topic of fermentation, which was chosen in polls by listeners of the show. However, I got into researching fermentation. It's humongous. So I'm going to cover that with at least two separate

episodes. And the first one is this one about yeast. There's going to be one later about pickling and then something else maybe after that. There's so much here. But Katie, we always start with what's your relationship to the topic or opinion of it? How do you feel about yeast? I like them personally. I actually have dealt with yeast. I used to have an aquarium. I had to give it away because I moved, but I wanted to have a lot of plants in the aquarium. You can have these fully planted aquariums where the substrate, you have aquatic grass and stuff growing out. But to get that level of greenery in your tank, it's useful to have an infusion of CO2 in your tank. Now having CO2, like buying the little miniature tanks of CO2 is kind of expensive. It's kind of annoying. So I wanted to just homebrew some CO2. And the way to do that is to fill a bottle with some yeast and some sugar and,

you know, mix it up. And then the yeast just kind of goes to town. And then I connected a tube to the bottle full of yeast and that tube to a diffuser into the fish tank. And it actually worked really well. That's phenomenal. Matt, researching this really taught me how little I knew about yeast going in. And now that I know about it, it's so cool that you set up that system. It makes sense to me. It's great. I put yeast farts in my fish tank and it made the plants grow. That's so cool. Well, now I'm just thinking about home projects, but we can dive straight into like all sorts of stats and numbers about this from here.

Because on every episode, our first fascinating thing about the topic is a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. This week, that's in a segment called... Let's give them stats here to total up. Let's give them numbers to math about. Let's give them numbers to math about. Let's give them something to analyze. How about stats? I want to, I should get a little tambourine. That's true. Maybe a tambourine emoji, right? That may or may not exist. I'm not going to look it up right now, but we'll just, on the Discord, we'll get some rhythm going. We'll do drum emojis and, you know, clap emojis. The sound happens in your head as you read it. And speaking of the Discord, this is the first Stats and Numbers name suggestion through the

Discord. Thank you, S. Ross, for that fun idea. Bonnie Wright. And we have a new name for it every week. Please make a Massillion Wacky and Bad as possible. Submit through that SIF Discord. Also take ideas through SIFpod at gmail.com. But there's like a lot of elements to what yeast is. And we'll talk about how it makes carbon dioxide and all these other things. But I want to start with one amazing recent story right away. The number is 4,500 years old.

Wow. Pretty old. 4,500 years old. Did we find a yeast that old and interview it? Nearly. What happened is somebody found ancient Egyptian yeast of that age, 4,500 years old, and then successfully baked bread. Which just I didn't think was possible at all. I thought yeast stops working after like a month.

I don't know. It just seems to go pretty fast. Yeah, I guess I mean, it also seems like illegal just to like take old Egyptian yeast and then like bake some bread. And it's like, yeah, it's pretty good. Toast it. Was this a scientific thing or was it just some person went and pillaged some yeast from a tomb? That was also my first question because I have a very Indiana Jones that belongs in a museum, but even better than him where you don't break stuff and give stuff to Nazis.

And turns out this is with scientific permission, but it seems to have mainly happened because a guy is really popular and just had enough pull to get Egyptian yeast from actual scientists and archaeologists. Is he like popular for bread? I had never heard of this guy, but there's a guy named Seamus Blackley. And he mainly for work is a video game designer and executive. He's in the gaming industry. Okay.

And is big in it. He is credited with being the designer of the original Microsoft Xbox. Okay, not yet seeing how bread comes into play. Agreed. And then the other thing is he is also, in parallel to designing the Xbox, Seamus Blackley is also an amateur Egyptologist. And then in his Twitter bio, he specifically calls himself a gastro-Egyptologist. Gastro is like a food prefix, like an eating stuff prefix. And the Egyptians are famous for their beer and for lots of things, in particular yeast-based things. When the COVID pandemic began,

like lots of people got interested in baking. There was lots of, especially baking sourdough. And this guy, Seamus Blackley is in his like Xbox palace or whatever and says, I'm going to get wild. And so he uses various connections to museums and to professional Egyptologists in particular, an archeological organization based in Australia. And then through the Australians, Blackley acquired scrapings of organic matter from the insides of Egyptian pottery and bakeware. And then he stuck some of the scrapings into baking a loaf of bread

and did not add traditional yeast. He said, let's see if this does the job. And it did. I see. Wow. Yeah, because yeast, as far as i know about it like it multiplies so you can conceivably if you treat that little scraping right it will multiply enough that you can actually have a usable amount for bread so i guess it's fine i mean i it seems like

we're not gonna run out of these scrapings guess, unless everyone wants to make ancient bread. Did he say what it tasted like? Did it taste like the wind blowing through the papyrus, the sun setting on the Nile? We should have sent a poet. Oh, like you. Yeah, National Geographic has a picture of it. And to me, it looks like bread. It looks fine.

And then he said it was edible and puffy. And yeah, I didn't get a lot of like flavor description. But yeah, it just generated bread like you would think. It's amazing. Wow. It would be really funny if there was some ancient pathogen hiding amongst the yeast and we just get some kind of zombie pandemic from bread. I'm like, this guy also morphed into an Anubis, but that seems fine. I mean, who doesn't, right? That's getting older, you know? That's getting older, you know?

This would be a very creative start to a horror movie about some kind of mummy's curse, like specifically a baker mummy that was like, don't use my yeast without permission. And then you do it. But now you're cursed with the baker mummy. And then you have to have a bake off between you and the mummy. I wrote a whole script. Go wild with that, Hollywood. Mary Berry somehow manages to save the day. Man, I like Prue, but shout out Mary Berry, too. It's her name.

It's good judges all around. Paul, I'm mixed on. I think the handshake is overly weighted. I think the lady judges also deserve an equivalent marker of success to give the contestants. A Prue fist bump. I want to see it. Anything. Yeah.

Oh, that'd be great. Yeah. She should give you one piece of the jewelry or something. Those huge statement necklaces she has. Like here. And then you just carry it. Yeah. I want like Prue to gently place her forehead against the contestants' forehead and just

say, well done, my child. Did we just start a religion? Wow. This is great. I think so. It sounds really good. I think so. Ancient cursed bread religion.

Let's go. Yeah. And this thing in real life, like it's 2020, he did it. And Blackley said, quote, we don't know if we got the ancient stuff as in yeast, but if we did, it's this great moment because these guys are eating for the first time in 4,500 years. End quote. These guys as in the yeast are eating for the first time. Yeah. He's very familiar with yeast, I guess.

He's like, look at these fellas. What are you talking about? Yeast. I mean, I feel that I did feel a bit of a, like, I don't know, a maternal instinct towards my yeast when I was trying to keep, keep it alive so that it would fill my fish tank with its farts so that the plants would grow. Yeah. Were you, I suppose you were feeding the yeast as time went on, like new sugar. Yeah. New sugar.

Kind of like trying to... Also, you just kind of have to make sure that you don't jangle them around too much. Too vigorous stirring is bad for the yeast. Too little stirring is bad for the yeast. Too much heat is bad for the yeast. Too little heat is bad for the yeast. They're delicate little creatures in certain ways. In other ways, clearly they're not because they last for thousands of years.

Because I also don't bake a lot of like bread. I bake a lot of cookies and cornbread and pastries and stuff, but not a lot of like bread bread. And so I don't really handle yeast very much. This has been a real education here. It's funny because I have handled yeast a lot, but not to bake bread just for their farts, which is really funny. I should try making bread though now that I, it's like I've, I've, I understand yeast caretaking, although I guess I'll feel a little sad because then I'll eat them.

Your husband's like, why haven't you turned the oven on? And you're like, I will. I will. I will. I'm just saying goodbye to all of them individually. I'm going to bake Dennis. I mean, the dough, the dough, it doesn't have a name yet. Speaking of that, there's one more number here about recent times. It is 647%. 647%. That's the reported increase in U.S. baking yeast purchases during the third week of March 2020 versus the previous year. We got a little stir-crazy, didn't we? Yes. And the following week of March, yeast was up 450% over the previous year's week. of March, yeast was up 450% over the previous year's week. And these are Nielsen numbers covered by NPR, but everybody attributed it to mid of March, 2020 in the U S people said,

okay, it's really a pandemic. Now we're doing one big grocery stock up and we're buying yeast for at least one baking project. We're doing it. Yeah. Yeah. I feel that I didn't get into the bread baking thing during the pandemic, but I did learn how to crochet. So I could crochet like a bread koozie. It kind of makes sense. I guess like there is maybe when you're in that situation, you have sort of an instinct to be able to do something basic, like make bread. Like I make my food. I'm safe now. I am self-sufficient. I can make some bread. Yeah. And our little buddy here, the next number is one. Much similar. One yeast. We're down to the last one. We got to save it. One is the number of cells in a yeast organism. Yes. And that brings us to what yeast is. I might not have necessarily known it is alive before researching this.

I really didn't know a lot. Well, it doesn't look alive, right? Because it's like it comes out. There are these like tiny little pellets and a little baggie. And those little pellets, like each one is not like a yeast because like the yeast are very, very small. Yeah. But then they make bread. But the idea that they're alive, that when you like add water to it, it's actually comes back to life and does stuff is pretty, pretty wild.

It really is. Pretty wild. It really is. And we'll talk a little bit later, too, about the difference between, like, essentially fresh yeast and then the active dry or instant yeast that's in the packets. You know, it's. Yeah. Because it really handles being dormant well, which speaks to that ancient Egypt story, too. Like yeast can just, especially if it gets dried out, it can just kind of wait to eat sugars. Yeah.

Which is, it also makes it seem like it's just not alive at all. It's easily confusing. It kind of reminds me of tardigrades, who are not unicellular organisms. They are multicellular, so they're larger. They're more complicated. But they also tolerate being desiccated, dried out for long periods of time. And there have been over hundred over hundred year old tardigrades that can be revived with some water so it's it is really interesting that some of

these small organisms can figure out a way to endure basically being little mummified things so i guess we are eating tiny mummies when you think about it. And like, just one of them is famous, like King Tut, all the others. Like, why are we choosing just the one that has a little crown? That's fun. Because yeah, yeast, I had no idea what type of life form it is. And according to associate professor Laura Rush of the University at Buffalo, go Bulls, she says that yeast is a fungus that grows as a single cell rather than as a mushroom. So like, I guess tiny, tiny takeaway here, yeast is fungus. I didn't know that. Oh, that's so cool. Yeah. And yeah, they're all single-celled funguses.

And then Scientific American says that some yeasts have multiple reproductive options, including the common baker's yeast or brewer's yeast that we're used to. They can either do something called budding, which is where a mother cell grows a protrusion that eventually splits off as a new yeast, or they can reproduce sexually by subdividing into two spores and then those combine with other spores. Yeah, I feel like this is also another common thing with a lot of these smaller organisms or microscopic organisms. You see it in larger organisms like coral polyps or even aphids where they have like asexual reproduction and budding is an asexual form of reproduction. Um, but then they can also have sexual reproduction where they,

they send out spores that can, you know, basically sexually combine it. And I think that, that it's interesting that a lot of these organisms, uh, have that kind of dual thing where it's like, yeah, you know what, once in a while we got to shuffle the deck, we got to do some sexual reproduction. But for a lot of the time we can just kind of like, you know, poop out another me. I love the idea of them being like people who are playing a card game and say, it's not shuffled up enough. I hate that feeling. But species-wide, like it's, come on, come on. It's shuffling.

It's true though, because like you got to introduce, like introducing some genetic diversity into your genes, like it is really helpful. So like, yes, by budding, you can very quickly increase your number and it's a sort of efficient way to reproduce in that way. But if you can introduce some amount of like sexual reproduction every so often, that increases your genetic diversity. That means that you're better able to cope with environmental challenges.

So, yeah, I think that is interesting. It's a technique used by a number of organisms, some that we can actually see, like coral. Because the other number here about these species is many hundreds, because it turns out that's how many different yeast species there are. Hundreds and hundreds of yeast species all over the world. And many of them do not have specific roles in the food we eat. But Professor Rush at Buffalo says that they're found, quote, everywhere in nature, everywhere from tree sap to grape skins. And also sometimes yeasts are traveling through the air around us and you can kind of catch them to make a sourdough starter or something like that.

God, that made me think of like breathable bread. Like if I could like huff, just like take a deep breath and just have the experience of eating a nice freshly baked loaf of bread, that would be so wonderful. But I guess that's not quite what you're talking about. Do you know how many species of yeast are used in baking? It turns out there is like one particular one that in modern times we use for tons of purposes, and it's called Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Saccharomyces cerevisiae is what we call baker's yeast, and it is also what we call brewer's yeast. And that second thing that's tucked into the scientific name because cerevisiae is a Latin word meaning of beer or from beer.

Ah, interesting. From taking high school Spanish, I remembered that cerveza means beer in Spanish. So when I saw that, I was like, is that beer? Hold on. And it was. It was very exciting. Nice. Yeah.

Shout out beer. It's great. Shout out to beer. That's so interesting. Like we probably cultivated the same use for like making beer and making bread. Do you know like what humans kind of prioritize? Did we come up with bread or did we come up with beer first in terms of using yeast? Apparently leavened bread first.

Yeah. Okay. Okay. And also some of the first of both of those was in Egypt. It really seems like Egypt, the whole world's been using yeast and doing cool things with it, but the ancient Egyptians really pushed it. They really went for it. Yeah. And there's yeast just everywhere in a way that is kind of hard to cogitate because everywhere in the world, there's a lot of what we now call wild yeast, which is yeast that humans didn't put anywhere. It's just on things and then gets cooked in.

that humans didn't put anywhere. It's just on things and then gets cooked in. And also, don't forget, there are yeasts on human bodies. All of us listening to this and speaking on it are covered in yeast. The medical school of Johns Hopkins. Oh, gross. I take it back. I take it back.

Keep listening. Oh, God. Yeah, the medical school of Johns Hopkins University, go Blue Jays. They say forms of yeast live all over us, in particular on our skin. And the most in spots where skin folds over, such as the navel. We also have yeast in our fingernail beds and toenail beds, in our genitals and in our mouths. And next number here with that is more than 700, because apparently there are

more than 700 microorganism types, including yeast, found inside a healthy person's mouth. Yeah. There's just all sorts of, and I love, I'd create your feature, Katie, when you talk about being a host of many parasites, because we're covered in stuff. It's just going on at a small scale. We really are. Every man is kind of an island full of life. Like if I recall correctly, like yeast can sometimes cause us problems on our body in terms of like, um, sort of skin irritation and things. Uh, but like typically it's, it's okay. And it's like, I think the least creepy thing that lives microscopic organism that lives on our body

because like we've got we got stuff like uh dermadex this time the eyelash mites and you look at those guys uh they're they're too tiny to see with the naked eye but they when you zoom in on them they look like a alien beaver with a lot of legs yeah Yeah, but in a bad way. I mean, that sounded pretty good in some ways. It's in a bad way. A flesh-colored alien beaver with too long of a tail, too many legs. That's fun. Cool, cool, cool. Yeah.

Yeah, but they're just kind of, they typically don't cause problems, but they sometimes do. I mean, that's kind of like, I feel like that's generally the thing. We have a bunch of these organisms on us. They typically don't cause problems. But when things get out of balance or you have immune issues or something, or at least neutral. And then, yeah, a yeast infection is when there's either too many yeast or something wrong with the balance of them. That just means something that is normally on you is out of whack, but it should still be there in general. Yeah, it's not necessarily only, like, it's not the yeast's fault entirely. Generally speaking, they just kind of hang out.

Yeah. They're just being our buddies as we, you know, bake bread with other yeasts and listen to podcasts. It's cool. It's all good. A couple are in a fish tank, if you're Katie. You know, it's just a world of yeast. It's really, really everywhere in a way.

I still kind of can't comprehend fully, but I've read about it enough to understand it. Yeah. I don't recommend dumping baker's yeast directly into your fish tank. Don't do that. Got to use a series of tubes and valves to get the yeast farts in the fish tank, but not have the yeast go into the fish tank. So, yeah. And it's not to make moonshine. I was not making like fish tank moonshine as some allege. Like your honor, I'm here for the carbon dioxide. That's all.

And then a fish lawyer is like, I'll think about it. It did. It did start to smell a little bit like beer, and I was sort of curious about tasting it, but I never did because I didn't want to go blind. Good job. Yeah, that's important. Yeah. What a thing. And all that leads into the first of two big takeaways for this episode about yeast. And we'll start with takeaway number one. People used yeast for thousands of years before they totally understood what it is. That makes sense. We didn't have microscopes. Exactly. Yeah. And I just love this as a way to find out the scope of how humans have used yeast over time for thousands of years. And then also, not only how recently microscopic viewing of them is, but then further centuries of research needed

to figure out what they were looking at. It's been a mystery, but also a thing we figured out in a practical way at the same time. I mean, they're tiny and they make our bread puff up. Of course we wouldn't get it. Like, that's weird. Yeah. And if you're me before research and walking around the world, you're like, I don't know, it goes in bread. And then that's all you think about it. That's it. Yeah.

And then here comes the fermentation suggestion. Now you got to know a bunch of stuff. And it's really cool. Yeah. I mean, it is. presentation suggestion. Now you got to know a bunch of stuff and it's really cool. Yeah. I mean, it is, to me, it blows my mind. We figured out anything at all at any point about like how, how to use it. And even like how, I don't even know how we managed to isolate it and like figure out how to use the, like, like cultivate the yeast. Like, oh, here's some goo

that like made this food better. I guess I keep the goo. Like what? I don't understand. There's still yeast all around us in the world. And you can do a lot of just like attracting yeast to a thing it wants to eat and then make that into a starter for bread. Like there's a lot of just accepting yeast from the world is how we first started using it. It's so strange. So did we kind of like, we would just sort of leave bread dough out or sugars out and the yeast would just come to it and then we're like, hey, great.

But we didn't realize yeast was doing stuff. Yeah. And the loose theory is that thousands of years ago we were making unleavened breads, like flat breads, and then accidentally left some dough out and collected yeast by mistake. And that's how we found out how to leaven bread and make it rise. But that's a whole process. Because if it's not this packet from the grocery store, dried out yeast, you need to refrigerate it or keep it cool. And so it was a lot of labor. Yeah. Like I imagine if there was some guy way back then and he was like, there's little tiny organisms in our bread

and it's making it puffy. Like he would probably get stoned to death. And he was too correct. Yes, he was canceled. That's cancel culture folks, being stoned for bread beliefs. Yeah. Yeah. Because yeah, the like super basics of how yeast functions in our foods and drinks, the shortest answer is fermentation. And one key source for this episode is a really exciting book to me. It's called Our Fermented Lives, A History. It's by fermentation expert and food historian, Julia Skinner. And she says that the shortest definition of fermentation is the transformative action of microorganisms. When we ferment a food, it's because we allow tiny organisms to do

something to it, usually either a bacteria or a yeast. Those are the two main ones. That's part of why this is multiple episodes. That's a lot to cover. Yeah. Yeah, I guess that really does make sense. I guess I hadn't really thought about a definition for fermentation. I've always just been like, you know, stuff goes bad, but in a good way. Me too. Yeah, I was like, oh, we let it get old or vinegary or something. That was my understanding. Yeah, it goes bad.

Just narrowing down to yeast fermentation. Again, these are all fungi. And so they ferment things by eating sugars, as you knew with your fish tank setup. And the basic exchange is yeast eats simple sugars, and then it turns that into carbon dioxide and into ethanol. You can generally call the ethanol alcohol, but because it's a fungus, it doesn't need oxygen. Like if folks have heard the truffles episode, we talked about how truffles can be underground and not breathe oxygen because they're fungus. They don't breathe oxygen. So we can just stick yeast into our foods.

It doesn't suffocate. And then it eats sugars and generates these two main byproducts, carbon dioxide and ethanol. It also sometimes makes a broad category of stuff called flavor molecules, which is that either the yeast or its byproducts do something that changes the flavor to our human tongue and taste. That's my favorite kind of molecule, the flavor ones. Yeah. Just some Nobel medal being given to Guy Fieri. Like, here you go. Yeah.

Like, honey, can you pass the flavor molecules? Can you pass the flavor molecules? I found when raising my legion of yeasts, they really loved just plain white sugar. It was very simple to take care of them. Easy to please. Yeah, it does. And it seems like that's a lot of how yeast became such an early friend of ours in cooking, that they're pretty straightforward once you know.

They're a fungus that wants to eat sugar, and then it will make us gases and alcohol. And that's the setup. And there's like a little heat that comes from that because it's also making energy for itself by eating. But it's an exchange that people figured out kind of worldwide, especially in Egypt, but everywhere. Yeah. And it's any kind of sugar. It's not just like cane sugar. It could be sugars from wherever you find sugars. Like you have sugars in apples. I'm sure wheat has some sugars in it. So it's like any kind of sugar out there,

it will eat those simple sugars. That's right, yeah. And the range of foods fermented with yeast, a lot of it comes out of that sugars and stuff naturally. For example, wine is fermented with yeast. Many grapes have yeasts on their skin already, so you just have yeast going into your product. There are also a lot of winemakers, especially in modern times,

adding yeast intentionally. There's also apparently an element where that thing winemakers famously do where they stomp on grapes with their bare feet. Apparently that adds like human foot yeasts. Oh God, why? Oh no, that one got me. I don't know. I'm like, oh yeah, eating billions of little microorganisms, that's fine. But we got to get the foot yeast in there? Oh, my God. What if this was all an op to get people to switch from wine to beer?

We're sponsored by beer. Ha ha. Anyway. All you really need is to soak your foot fungus in probably like a $200 bottle of wine. Yeah. Humans are weird. And like our love of alcohol is a big part of yeast becoming our friend. Because then like as the grapes ferments, the fermentation is yeast generating alcohol for it and making it alcoholic. Ironically, I feel like I would need a glass of wine before feeling comfortable drinking wine that I knew had feet in it.

Well, you can use our other beverage friends, I guess, to kick it off. Because, yeah, yeast is also a crucial ingredient in beer. You turn grain and water into a mash, which is called a wort. And then you let yeast eat the sugars in the wort. So also yeast is going into beer. It's one of the four core ingredients of beer. So I've got feet in wine and I've got warts in beer. Sounds great.

Sounds delicious. The word is W-O-R-T. And I guess in medieval England that sounded normal, but it makes me think of foot problems. Yeah, for sure. No, but that's great. That's great. Let's get those little guys in there and make those warts into beer.

In both those beverages, the yeast is putting out alcohol to make them alcoholic, and then indirectly yeast gives us liquor, because it turns out once a substance becomes too alcoholic, the yeast can no longer grow and thrive. It's too toxic. The limit is around 18% alcohol by volume. And so we get liquor by fermenting a base with yeast and then using machines to distill that into a harder alcohol. So it's also playing a part there. It turns out whiskey is a distilled version of beer wort. I had no idea. Yeah, that makes sense because it is a little funny to think of anything surviving up to the point of alcohol because we use alcohol to kill stuff and disinfect things.

Yeah, yeast is playing a dangerous game. It's like I'm filling my own space with alcohol and I can't live in too much of it. It's a daredevil. Living life on the edge. Yeah. I guess they would have been fine if we hadn't come up with a bright idea of distilling it down to its most potent toxic form. That's tough for them. We're not a good friend.

Yeah. This alcohol is tasty. Let's make it harder and also burn more. And the other probably most famous food for yeast is breads, any leavened bread. And that's where yeast makes that bread rise because you put it in and it eats the sugars. And then it releases the two ingredients, carbon dioxide and ethanol alcohol. And it releases the two ingredients, carbon dioxide and ethanol alcohol. The carbon dioxide lifts the dough.

And then also inside of a hot oven, all that alcohol just burns up. And the alcohol burns up and turns into more gases. So you're really getting two gases from the yeast when you bake bread. And that's why you get all those like bubbles in your bread. And that's why it's so fluffy. Yeah, even some relatively flat shaped breads. Like there's a bread called injera that is used mainly in like Ethiopian food. It's the, the rolls of a flat shaped bread that you pick it up with. That still uses yeast too.

Like there, there's a very limited range of totally unleavened breads. Yeast is in the rest of it. Yeah. Matzo is totally unleavened and it's very the famous one. Yeah. Very dense. Yeah. Yeah. And there's Irish soda bread is made with baking soda instead of yeast. Oh, interesting. And then like another category of yeast fermentation is acetic acid fermentation, which usually uses a combination of bacteria and yeast. So we get kombucha and kefir and ginger beer using a starter culture that is called a SCOBY. That's an acronym.

S-C-O-B-Y, symbiotic combination of bacteria and yeast. I'm going to need people who are making yeast things to come up with less gross words for stuff like wart and scoby. Like I don't want to feel like I'm eating a pustule or drinking a pustule in my drink. But, you know, yeah, call them yeast nodules. No, that's not good either. It's hard, actually. It's hard. Like Excelsior lifting fungus.

Eh, it still has fungus in it. It's just not going to work. Yeah, yeah. And with the timeline of using this, the recipes are ancient. We said that leavened bread starts in Egypt. That was about 6,000 years ago. Then not too long after that, beer making mainly begins in ancient Egypt. And their beers are more alcoholic than U.S. beers, but the super basic ingredient list is pretty similar. And a lot of these other recipes are ancient too. Vox.com says the first kombucha recipes date back almost 2,500 years to Qin Dynasty China. So, you know, we've been using

it long before we knew the stuff earlier in the show about it being fungus. Like, no one knew that, but they just trial and error didn't use it. Been around all that time and I still haven't tried it. Oh, kombucha? Yeah. It's pretty good, but you get used to it. Yeah.

It's intimidating to me. It honestly reminds me of the first time you try beer and you're like, yuck. But then you get used to it and it's good yeah so it's probably a whole yeast family thing i'm still trying to figure out if i've been gaslit by beer to think it tastes good like if i've just been like yes this bad flavor is good actually some morpheus in the matrix type figure is going to give you a pill and open your eyes. You'll be like, oh, this was gross bread the whole time.

Weird. Yeah, you're eating yeast farts. Yeah, I know. It's still bread. It's still good. She's beginning to understand. He's in the ship, like, watching you figure it out. So yeast farts are good.

No. So yeast farts are good. No. Like, as far as observation of it, there's a funny thing where yeast is the reason we have the word fermentation in English for that process. The journal Nature says fermentation comes from the Latin word fervere, which means to boil. And that's not what yeast does. Yeast does not boil food. But early winemakers observed their mixture of crushed grapes with all their weird yeasts in it, and they saw bubbles. And the bubbles are because the yeast is producing gases. But they said, oh, that visually resembles boiling. That's what I'm going to call it.

That visually resembles boiling. That's what I'm going to call it. Yeah. When I would feed my yeast sugar and they would multiply and exude gases, yeah, it would bubble up. It looked like I'd just shake it up a soft drink. Cool. I guess it was surprisingly active. It's so neat.

It really enriches my mental picture of all these food processes. There's so many other recipes where it's just A and B and C and put them together. And this is like, gather your fungal friend who will live in the food. It's cool. It's cool to me. It does feel like witchcraft, doesn't it? Yeah. Yes, exactly. It's a, it's a Harry Potter potions class recipe in a good way. Right, right. Just like take the little bubbles or, I don't know, boofins. I don't really know. I don't remember Harry Potter critter names, but, you know, there's just like a bunch of little guys and it's like, yeah,

we just like take the little bloobins and then we put them in bread and eat them. And they are sentient, yes, but we're wizards and we do not care about that. Someday I will seek out information about how the author of Harry Potter thought of this stuff. And the author of Harry Potter is Daniel Radcliffe. I don't know if people have seen that on the internet or are aware of it. I'm going to take Alex aside for a minute and he's going to come back real sad. And whoosh sound, edit out weeping, whoosh sound, and we're back, folks.

But the last part of this takeaway is Europeans in particular theorizing and discovering what yeast actually is. Everyone just knew it works. And then as recently as the mid 1700s, they thought yeast was not a living thing. And then it took the dawn of microscopes and lots more study to figure it out. The journal Nature says, it's a famous Dutch scientist, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek. He was the first person to like observe yeast cells because he developed lenses for magnification and kind of the early microscopes. He observed yeast cells in the year 1680, but he decided those were globules in a fluid that were probably just starchy particles left

over from brewing beer. He was like, well, I see globules, who cares? So he was Anthony van Leeuwenhoek? Yeah. leftover from brewing beer. He was like, well, I see globules. Who cares? So he was Anthony von Lavenhook? Yeah. Is that why we call it lavening? And they were like, hey, Anthony, do you want some matzah? He's like, no, thanks. It's like, okay, well, we're calling this something else then. Get out of here. You jerk. It's quite good. It's dense, but that's, we're calling this something else then. Get out of here, you jerk. It's quite good.

It's dense, but that's part of the appeal. You know, it's good. So he observes it and also doesn't figure it out in 1680. And then a century and a half goes by. The next advance in understanding yeast is in 1838. A French scientist named Charles Caguenard de La Tour brings a microscope to a brewery in Paris. That's fun.

Bring a microscope to a brewery. It does feel like a drunk scientist thing to do, though. Like, he's already had some beer, and he's like, oh, let me take a closer look at this. Why don't I have another? And I take just a real close look at this one. Drinking it, sipping I'd say, it's real close. Look at this one. Drinking it, sipping it, sloshing it under the microscope. I gotta examine this beer for quality.

Yeah, beer is a lot of the thread of finding this stuff out. He looks at the brewery, like, wort, and he observes yeast reproduction, which, which, uh, Leeuwenhoek did not see. And Cagnard de la Tour says, I see yeast reproducing. I theorize that yeast is a living thing. 1838, we begin to think this. And then, well, yeah, I mean, it makes, it makes a lot of sense that we wouldn't understand that a thing we literally cannot see with the naked eye,

we didn't think it was alive and doing yeast budding and weird yeast sex and all that. That too, the multiple reproductive systems, you would just think your like vision is wrong or something, you know, like I clearly, I need to wipe these lenses down with a big cloth or something. I, or I've had seven beers. Seven beers. That's probably why. I think you've had enough, buddy. Haven't you heard of sample sizes? And then after him, another probably more famous French scientist, Louis Pasteur, he laid out basic theories behind yeast fermentation in 1876. And there was still more research to do from there. As recently as 1907, a German scientist named Eduard Buchner won the 1907 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for an advance in understanding

cell-free yeast fermentation, where if you just pull out specific elements of yeast's functions, you can put those chemicals into something to ferment it. Like this is like a relatively cutting edge thing, understanding the yeast that we've used forever. Yeah. Again, it's weird to me, we would even understand that yeast exists. Like how do we figure out something exists without being able to see it? We just kind of understand the effect it has on stuff. And so I'm like, I got to hand it to humanity. I'm impressed.

We figured out as much as we did. Yeah. Good for us. You know, and yeast, yeast, this whole time is going, we are here, we are here. And we're like, yeah, we, we can't hear you. That's like elephant stuff. Like leave us out of this. Hey, I'm drinking.

That was basically the take. Shut up, you. I'm drinking. Just generations of Barney from The Simpsons. Yeah. Folks, that was a huge takeaway. We're going to rest up from it and take a break. And when we're back, the Fleischman family will change the world.

I'm Jesse Thorne. I just don't want to leave a mess. I'm Jesse Thorne. I just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places, yes. I'm going to manifest and roam. All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR.

Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience. One you have no choice but to embrace because yes, listening is mandatory. The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you.

And remember, no running in the halls. Folks, welcome back and welcome to the other big takeaway for this main episode. Takeaway number two. Mass-produced American yeast impacted the course of World War II and Silicon Valley and comedy. Wow. I feel like a lot of things connect back to World War II. If folks heard the paperclips episode, that was almost a World War II history podcast. That is less common with other topics, but this one touches on World War II. That is less common with other topics, but this one touches on World War II.

Yeah, because it was especially a 1940s U.S. thing where the Fleischmann company started doing active dry yeast, which you may have bought, especially if you're an American baker or shopper. Yes, that's exclusively what I have gotten when I've gotten yeast. The key sources here, it's Julia Skinner's book, Our Fermented Lives, also pieces for Mental Floss by Michelle Debchak and for Vice by Michelle Bakalintal. This is really about the whole process of getting packets of dry yeast in a store rather than needing to have some kind of culture going of yeast. And the starting point is 1871. 1871 is when an Austrian baron invented commercial yeast starters, like the industrial process of developing those. His name is Baron Maximilian Freiherr von Springer. Of course it is. Yeah. That's exactly what I was imagining.

Yes. Did he have a mustache? He must have had a mustache. I'm just going to decide he did. I don't have any pictures. Yeah. But come on. Austrians, that was their whole deal in the 1800s, facial hair. Yeah. I mean, it makes sense that a rich

baron with a name like that would come up with dry packaged yeast. And technically this wasn't the start of the dry kind, but he had, he had the idea of like industrial facilities to distribute the fresh kind. He said, I'm going to extract yeast from beer brewing wort, sell that yeast on its own to bakeries. And there were people doing this on a small scale, but he thought of doing it on a big scale. And Julia Skinner says everyone immediately copied this 1871 idea. Like the next year, a French company called Les Saff opened their first industrial yeast-making plants, and apparently they are the largest yeast maker in the world to this day. In the U.S., we have the other famous company for this, which is Fleischmann's,

which was founded by two brothers, Charles and Max Fleischmann, who migrated from Hungary to Cincinnati, Ohio. They scored a spot at the 1876 Centennial Expo in Philadelphia to promote their fresh yeast and became just a major fresh yeast producer at an industrial scale in the U.S. That's really interesting. I imagine it's not entirely straightforward because you have to make sure that your yeast is just yeast because you're growing sort of these microorganisms. How do you know there aren't other guys joining the party that you maybe don't want in there? They're a big part of why Saccharomyces cerevisiae, I know that's the only super specific yeast species we've talked about, I know that's the only super specific yeast species we've talked about, but this industrialization is part of why that one is the main one, because apparently it's a very consistent flavor, very consistent shelf life and ease of breeding. And so these companies help make that one of the main yeasts we use because, yeah, you want some kind of stability in your products.

Yeah, that's interesting. So they just like have big old vats of these yeasts that they feed, keep alive and then package? Yeah, or else like pick up from other processes done by other companies. Like apparently the Fleischmann's also got a gin distillery going because the process of having the raw material for getting yeast also fit in well with making gin. And so they were one of the first major makers of that in the US. It's a whole system of culturing various funguses and making foods. I guess I don't know that much about what gin is. I just thought it was a hard liquor of some kind. Yeah, gin is a grain base. It turns out that there's juniper and other things going into it. But yeah, there's just all these different things coming together. So many liquors start from grain.

It's just very simply that. But they dress it up, and then there's a guy in a cool old-timey outfit standing on a barrel. Yeah, they try to make it more interesting. You kind of have to have that guy stand on the barrel because it gets flavorings from his feet uh seep into the barrel boot yeast yeah gross like next time like something you get like a athlete's foot and someone's like oh that's that's gross it's like no no i'm cultivating yeast for some specialty alcohol. You're welcome. That's so gross. Because this yeast production too, like Fleischmann's and Lesoth,

they become huge companies before developing this packet yeast in the store. But basically by becoming just dominant through scale for fresh yeast, they also start putting capital into, is there any way to make a yeast that does not need to be refrigerated, and a yeast that lasts for more than a couple of days? We need to do just something that is more handy. And in the 1940s, they hit on active dry yeast, a yeast that is a packet of what looks like crystals or granules. And then it can just sit dormant and then be activated by adding hot water. Yeah. Yeah. I found that with my yeast, like the temperature of the water was important because if it's too hot, it doesn't, it kills them.

But if it's too cold, it doesn't activate them. So they're a little bit fussy, but still, yeah, it was, uh, I, I, what, do you know, like what the process is to convert them from squishy wet yeast to dry yeast that can tolerate being dried out like that? Yeah. The basic gist is they dry it out and also physically press it. And so that lets it just sort of wait for future use, kind of like that strange Egyptian culture that the inventor of the Xbox or whatever was using. That basic process, that's how we got active dry yeast. And then also those companies in the 1980s developed instant yeast. And as I understand it, the baking community has

strong opinions about active dry yeast versus instant yeast. They are not quite the same thing, but there's also similarities. They're both dried out yeast. The differences are that active dry yeast needs to spend some minutes bubbling in the dough and instant yeast can just work immediately. Also, this dormant yeast, it's still an organism with a lifespan. It can die and stop working. And with active dry yeast, you can see whether it's alive because of the bubbling, but instant yeast will not bubble either way. You don't have a way to check before you start baking. Interesting.

Yeah, I think I only used active dry yeast. I don't think I ever used instant yeast because I wanted the bubbling. think I ever used instant yeast because I wanted the bubbling. Yeah, two of my limited yeast experiences are seeing both of these kinds in the store and not knowing the difference and then going through cabinets and finding some active dry yeast that has been there too long and it's dead. And I'm like, I am wasteful and I judge myself. So a lot of joyful yeast experiences for this fella before researching. In case people want to know, active dry yeast, apparently it can sit on a shelf for about one to two years and still be alive. So you have some time.

If you're really irresponsible like me, it will pass away. But you can still use it for a while. Kind of reminds me in a way of sea monkeys, because you'd get these sea monkeys. They'd be dried, desiccated. You put them in water and hopefully come alive unless they're too old, in which case they don't. They're just brine shrimp, which is just a little shrimp. Tiny shrimp. So they're not in the gorilla family.

That's what you're saying. No, they are tiny crustaceans. is just a little shrimp. Tiny shrimp. So they're not in the gorilla family. That's what you're saying. No. They are tiny crustaceans. Also, you can... I'm shut at barnacles. Yeah. It depends on who they're marketing it to. Children, sea monkeys, fun little friends that look like weird, multi-legged aliens.

And then to people who want to feed their fish, it's food for your fish. Yeah. As humans, we are so into taking species and sort of packaging them for ourselves, and especially yeast and sea monkeys. We were like, we're going to put you in a little envelope and I'll use you when I need you. And it seems to work for everybody, but it's amazing. It's amazing we do it. And yeah, and this active dry yeast in the 1940s was revolutionary. And I listed a couple of things that's impacted, which is World War II, Silicon Valley, and comedy. Yes.

The first two are really fast. Fleischman's rolled this out in 1943, and the U.S. military immediately said, thank you. Because shelf-stable yeast for the whole U.S. war machine in World War Two, you know, it didn't like win the war or nothing, but it just made military baking and feeding the troops a lot easier across the board. Yeah, that makes sense. There's like soldiers march on their bellies and also yeast and they like fluffy bread. yeast and they like fluffy bread. Yeah, exactly. And it was easier to bake it for them than any past army in all of history. It's wild. It's a really handy thing. Yeah. Yeah. It's so funny how like just these little things, these little details really do affect history in weird ways. Yeah. And then another like almost butterfly effect thing is Silicon Valley. Fleischmann's

sold this to the military first to help. And then after World War II sold it in stores post-war, they went from being already the dominant U.S. yeast company to this day being hugely dominant. And their family became generationally wealthy. The impact on Silicon Valley is that the great, great, great granddaughter of Charles Fleischman is Elizabeth Holmes. The disgraced founder of Theranos, which was the fake blood testing company. She's a direct descendant of them. And according to the podcast, The Dropout, that lineage put a lot of pressure on her to become wealthy and a winner at all costs and might have influenced the whole thing. And we're still measuring the impact, but her whole situation really put a dent in Silicon Valley's reputation

and vibe. Maybe she should have just gotten really good at baking and been like, this is my heritage sourdough bread that cures cancer, by the way. You got down there vocally. I really appreciate it. That was awesome. I mean, obviously she's a scammer, a bad person. She hurt a lot of people. But the fake deep voice thing, I I'm someone who has like a relatively natural high pitched voice. And I sometimes try to bring it down like a little bit for podcasting. But like the commitment that that woman does to bring her voice down to like like this is my natural speaking voice. I am authoritative. I make bread that can cure everything. And it comes in pill form. Permanent fake voice. That's not a life to live.

No. What if somebody surprises you or something? You'll slip. Your blood pressure would be through the roof all the time. I just admire the commitment to the bit. So that's World War II in Silicon Valley. The last thing here is comedy, because the Fleischman impact on comedy is accidental and huge. And it starts with the Catskill Mountains.

Catskill Mountains are north of New York City. They're the traditional lands of the Mohican peoples and the Munsee Lenape people. And I'll link especially Hudson Valley Magazine about that. But Catskill is a Dutch name. Colonizing Europeans made it part of southern New York state. There's a whole history of Americans like beginning to vacation and just kind of coming up with that as an activity. And one of the first spots was the Catskill Mountains, the beautiful woods and mountains up there near New York City. In the early 1800s, all these villages of vacation cottages pop up. The first U.S. large resort hotel in the whole U.S. was in the Catskills in 1824. And then the wrinkle with all this is that the first vacationing and resort things in the Catskills were built by Gentiles,

and the Fleischmanns were Jewish Americans. And despite their wealth, they, along with all other Jewish Americans, were barred from most of these resorts and facilities and places. It was what's called restricted. And it was just discrimination. But the response from Charles Fleischmann was, hey, I'm incredibly wealthy from yeast. And so he just purchased a chunk of Catskills land and built his own resort. He was like, great, I'm just going to do that. And then me and anybody else can go. Jewish people can vacation here. And we're going to have the best bakeries here.

And they ended up having the best comedy because from there, Fleischman's resort sparked a specifically Jewish American trend, especially coming from New York City of vacationing and the Catskills, especially starting in the 1920s. And that ended up being a whole circuit for Jewish comedians to get gigs and also like play to mostly Jewish audiences a lot of times for the first time. And eventually the name Borscht Belt got applied to that location and to its comedy style. And the like resorts and that specific Jewish folks practice is pretty much gone now. But basically every American stand up comedian and comedy

writer performer, they've been influenced by key, especially Jewish comedians who got going up there. That's really interesting. Yeah, I mean, I've always had this sense that, like, a lot of these sort of Jewish comedy style, it's done because, like, when you're excluded from a lot of society or oppressed, like, you got to kind of have a way to cope with that. And humor is one way. And the fact that that sort of, you know, stomping ground for all these comedians was literally created because the Fleischmanns were excluded from the other areas.

Yeah, that's really interesting. Yeah. Like, yeah, the discrimination was so strong, even Charles Fleischmann's wealth couldn't solve it. Yeah. They were like, no, you can't come. And he was like, I'm going to fully build my own resort. And they were like, fine. Sounds good. Great. Enjoy. Like, no, you can't come. And he was like, I'm going to fully build my own resort. And they were like, fine. Sounds good.

Great. Enjoy. Like, it's wild. And he did enjoy it immensely. And he did. And then we got everybody funny. Either, who either did it there or was influenced by it. Yeah.

We all can thank yeast. It's all because of yeast. Hey folks, that's the main episode for this week. Welcome to the outro with fun features for you, starting with help remembering this episode. Let's run back through this week's big takeaways. Takeaway number one, people used yeast for thousands of years before they totally understood what it is. Takeaway number two, mass-produced American yeast changed the course of World War II and Silicon Valley and comedy. And before those two humongous takeaways, stats about everything from Egyptian yeast still working to the yeasts all around us and on us.

Those are the takeaways. Also, I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now. If you support this show at MaximumFun.org, members get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is the astounding past and present of research on yeast genetics. Visit sifpod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of almost 11 dozen other bonus shows, and a catalog of all sorts of maximum fun, BoCo. It's special audio just for you.

Thank you for being somebody who backs this podcast operation. Additional fun things, check out our research sources. Key sources this week include the book Our Fermented Lives, A History, which is by fermentation expert and award-winning food historian Julia Skinner. Also, digital resources from places including Johns Hopkins University, National Geographic, and the journal Nature. That page also features resources such as native-land.ca. I'm using those to acknowledge that I recorded this on the traditional land of the Canarsie and Lenape peoples. Also, Katie taped this in the country of Italy, and I want to acknowledge that in my location and in many other locations in the Americas and

elsewhere, Native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode. Speaking of my co-host Katie Golden, please dig her weekly podcast, Creature Feature, about animals, science, and more. Our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by the Budos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Extra, extra special thanks go to our members. And thank you to all our listeners. I'm thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that?

Talk to you then. MaximumFun.org Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Audience supported.