First of all, bread-making need not be “industrialized” in order to—for all practical purposes—require commercially-produced yeast. If you doubt this, then please provide “from-scratch” (i.e., without using store-bought yeast) recipes of all of the following (results must be indistinguishable from those produced with store-bought yeast):
Challah
“Black bread” (wheat+rye breads such as Darnitsky or Orlovsky)
Brioche
Pizza dough
Second, if you want to explain yeast’s role in making bread, it is not enough to comment that yeast gives off CO2 and thereby leavens the dough. You have to answer the following questions (can you do this without consulting Wikipedia?):
Why should dough be leavened? You say this makes it “nicer” to eat, but how?
Is yeast the only way to leaven dough? What are the two other common leavening methods?
Why are the other leavening methods inappropriate for bread? (Or are they?)
In other words, for an answer to be fully satisfying, to impart the kind of understanding that lets us make predictions, then it needs to not only answer the question of “why X?”, but also “why X and not Y or Z?” (In this case: “why yeast, and not any of the alternatives?”)
Finally, you say:
Zetetic explanations are empowering. First, the integration of concrete and model-based thinking is checkable on multiple levels—you can look up confirming or disconfirming facts, and you can also validate it against your personal experience or sense of plausibility, and validate the coherence and simplicity of the models used. Second, they affirm the basic competence of humans to explore our world. By centering the process of discovery rather than a finished product, such explanations invite the audience to participate in this process, and perhaps to surprise us with new discoveries.
Having read your story about yeast, what am I now empowered to do, that I previously could not? Make sourdough? But I could already do that; one does not need to know almost any of the stuff you said, in order to make sourdough. (Here’s a page that actually teaches you how to do it. Note that the only significant element it shares with your explanation, is the point that yeast—and the bacteria that are also critical to a sourdough starter—are omnipresent in the environment. Indeed, I don’t even need to know that; I can simply assume that water and flour, left alone, turn into a sourdough starter by sheer magic, and the process will still work fine.) Make commercial-grade yeast? Nope, I couldn’t do that before and I still can’t do it.
Fundamentally, I think that you are conflating two very different things.
First, there are the sorts of explanations that fill in an overall, unified, coherent view of the world. (“Big History” is perhaps the purest example of this approach; and the sort of perspective advocated by Tooby & Cosmides in “The Psychological Foundations of Culture” is a classic example. Other examples abound, of course.) These are, indeed, valuable; they broaden our horizons, and allow us to understand our world as a single, continuous system, that encompasses all the phenomena we are aware of, on all the scales we can perceive. Such a perspective indeed has many benefits. The trouble is, it is difficult to construct, and takes far, far more effort, and more detail, and more scope, than what you’ve provided here. It is also very difficult to be sure that any given part of that unified perspective is correct. Verification is tedious and fraught with peril of error. And one must gain a very broad picture indeed, before it’s possible to use that unified perspective for any practical purposes.
Then there are the sorts of explanations that do, in fact, empower you to accomplish specific goals which you previously could not accomplish or even consider. These look very different from the other sort. They tend to be practical, specific, and circumscribed.[1]
Attempting to combine these things yields insight porn.
[1] To take literally the first example that comes to mind: most people don’t realize that they can easily make vanilla extract—a classic “magical thing produced by a mysterious Scientific-Industrial priesthood in special temples called laboratories or factories”—at home. How? Well, almost any flavor extract you can buy in the store is simply a solution of flavor-bearing compounds in alcohol—which is, as we all learn in chemistry class, an excellent solvent. Therefore, simply buy some vanilla beans, slice them open, and immerse them in vodka for several months. Voilà: vanilla extract. (Note the brevity of this explanation, the lack of history-lesson digressions, etc.)
That is simply an unambiguous standard of evaluation. If, instead, you prefer to aim for “superior to the results produced with store-bought yeast”, by all means, have at it. Relative quality is more difficult to agree upon than indistinguishability, of course; but if your results are sufficiently better, then this concern may not apply in practice.
Should I take your reply to mean that you do, in fact, have “from-scratch-yeast” recipes for all four types of baked goods I listed? I confess, I am now somewhat excited to see them!
I think this is a great comment, and I would maybe like to see this broken out into its own post (after making it a bit more general than this specific circumstance)
Of course, now that you’ve pointed it out, I know what you mean—or do I? I still don’t have anything remotely like a procedure for making cider. But tell me: have you made hard cider from nothing but fresh apples? If so, how did it turn out?
A second’s searching found this website: howtomakehardcider.com. The author of this site says:
Yes, you can make simple “hard cider” with bread yeast, a plastic jug and a balloon on top. If you want help with these crude methods, look for another website, and don’t invite me over for a taste. Blech.
This would seem to refer to the sort of method which you imply. (Right? I’m not quite sure… which is another problem with your claim!) Do you disagree with this fellow’s assessment? When he says that what you need to make hard cider is “Brewing yeast (NOT bread yeast)”, is he wrong?
Are you, in fact, claiming that either you personally, or someone whom you consider quite reliable (as opposed to, for example, “some guy on reddit”), have made hard cider from nothing but fresh apples, and it turned out well (drinkable, delicious, etc.)?
Edit: I was going to make the following point in a follow-up comment, but since Benquo has chosen to disengage (which is certainly his right), I’ll put this here, for the benefit of others reading it:
Suppose that I, having read Benquo’s post, have this insight that “Oh! If wild yeast is everywhere, and it eats sugar, and it produces alcohol, then… I can… just kind of… leave apples sitting around… and they’ll turn into cider?? Right?!”
And suppose I try doing this. What will happen?
What will happen is that I will produce something terrible, and I will be lucky if I don’t give myself food poisoning (due to mold, e.g.).
And then—assuming the experience doesn’t put me off cider-making permanently—I will go online, and I will search for instructions on how to make cider (such as the site I linked above). And those instructions are going to describe a process that is much more complex than the one Benquo implies, and this process will require specialized equipment, and techniques which I could never simply deduce myself from first principles; and, most importantly of all, they will require commercially produced yeast.
But, of course, I could have simply done that in the first place. The “zetetic” explanation—and the misguided attempt to deduce some practical technique from it—adds nothing.
From the first site, I think a clearer statement is from this more specific page, which says
Yeast: Wild or Domesticated
The real truth of using wild yeast is it is just going to depend on where your wild yeast comes from. Most folks at cider mills swear by using wild yeast, but that is because the yeast that lives at their apple processing facilities is especially adapted to work with apples. What about the yeast floating around in your kitchen (or bathroom?) You could end up with fantastic cider, horrible cider, or even vinegar (actually made from bacteria, but I digress).
Indeed. And this, of course, goes to my point: you need to know and understand the specific domain in question in great detail (far greater than that provided in the OP) to make informed decisions, to accomplish anything.
Not aiming to be a full response, but doesn’t the StackExchange link you shared basically say that non-sterile cider isn’t a real issue and that the straightforward thing should basically work?
Basically just wash the apples very well before pressing and practice good sanitation during production.
Use a desired yeast instead of chancing with wild fermentation. Few wild yeasts actually produce favorable results.
Once fermentation is complete the health risks are minimal. Fermented cider is an environment where harmful pathogens can’t survive long. Some molds can produce neural toxins, so if you have black / blue mold use caution.
The second paragraph seems to indicate a problem with using wild yeasts, but my model is that this is basically just about taste, and not about any real risks.
Ah, let me clarify: I linked that page not to claim that contamination/poisoning is a risk, but merely to support the claim that using wild yeast would not yield a satisfactory result (which is why I linked it from the part of the my comment’s text that was about results, not the part about risk).
I think it comes from special temples called laboratories or factories, where it is produced by a mysterious Scientific-Industrial priesthood. Why? Where do you think it comes from?
Do you mean to imply that you can, in the comfort of your own home, produce yeast which is as effective, for all the applications for which it’s used, as this stuff? (Or, even, all the applications for which it’s used by a home baker?) This is an exciting claim! Have you attempted to make money from being able to do so? Or, if you are not inclined to monetize this skill—certainly an understandable position!—would you consider writing a post detailing the process?
First of all, bread-making need not be “industrialized” in order to—for all practical purposes—require commercially-produced yeast. If you doubt this, then please provide “from-scratch” (i.e., without using store-bought yeast) recipes of all of the following (results must be indistinguishable from those produced with store-bought yeast):
Challah
“Black bread” (wheat+rye breads such as Darnitsky or Orlovsky)
Brioche
Pizza dough
Second, if you want to explain yeast’s role in making bread, it is not enough to comment that yeast gives off CO2 and thereby leavens the dough. You have to answer the following questions (can you do this without consulting Wikipedia?):
Why should dough be leavened? You say this makes it “nicer” to eat, but how?
Is yeast the only way to leaven dough? What are the two other common leavening methods?
Why are the other leavening methods inappropriate for bread? (Or are they?)
In other words, for an answer to be fully satisfying, to impart the kind of understanding that lets us make predictions, then it needs to not only answer the question of “why X?”, but also “why X and not Y or Z?” (In this case: “why yeast, and not any of the alternatives?”)
Finally, you say:
Having read your story about yeast, what am I now empowered to do, that I previously could not? Make sourdough? But I could already do that; one does not need to know almost any of the stuff you said, in order to make sourdough. (Here’s a page that actually teaches you how to do it. Note that the only significant element it shares with your explanation, is the point that yeast—and the bacteria that are also critical to a sourdough starter—are omnipresent in the environment. Indeed, I don’t even need to know that; I can simply assume that water and flour, left alone, turn into a sourdough starter by sheer magic, and the process will still work fine.) Make commercial-grade yeast? Nope, I couldn’t do that before and I still can’t do it.
Fundamentally, I think that you are conflating two very different things.
First, there are the sorts of explanations that fill in an overall, unified, coherent view of the world. (“Big History” is perhaps the purest example of this approach; and the sort of perspective advocated by Tooby & Cosmides in “The Psychological Foundations of Culture” is a classic example. Other examples abound, of course.) These are, indeed, valuable; they broaden our horizons, and allow us to understand our world as a single, continuous system, that encompasses all the phenomena we are aware of, on all the scales we can perceive. Such a perspective indeed has many benefits. The trouble is, it is difficult to construct, and takes far, far more effort, and more detail, and more scope, than what you’ve provided here. It is also very difficult to be sure that any given part of that unified perspective is correct. Verification is tedious and fraught with peril of error. And one must gain a very broad picture indeed, before it’s possible to use that unified perspective for any practical purposes.
Then there are the sorts of explanations that do, in fact, empower you to accomplish specific goals which you previously could not accomplish or even consider. These look very different from the other sort. They tend to be practical, specific, and circumscribed.[1]
Attempting to combine these things yields insight porn.
[1] To take literally the first example that comes to mind: most people don’t realize that they can easily make vanilla extract—a classic “magical thing produced by a mysterious Scientific-Industrial priesthood in special temples called laboratories or factories”—at home. How? Well, almost any flavor extract you can buy in the store is simply a solution of flavor-bearing compounds in alcohol—which is, as we all learn in chemistry class, an excellent solvent. Therefore, simply buy some vanilla beans, slice them open, and immerse them in vodka for several months. Voilà: vanilla extract. (Note the brevity of this explanation, the lack of history-lesson digressions, etc.)
Why? Why would I care?
That is simply an unambiguous standard of evaluation. If, instead, you prefer to aim for “superior to the results produced with store-bought yeast”, by all means, have at it. Relative quality is more difficult to agree upon than indistinguishability, of course; but if your results are sufficiently better, then this concern may not apply in practice.
Should I take your reply to mean that you do, in fact, have “from-scratch-yeast” recipes for all four types of baked goods I listed? I confess, I am now somewhat excited to see them!
I think this is a great comment, and I would maybe like to see this broken out into its own post (after making it a bit more general than this specific circumstance)
For one thing, make hard cider from nothing but fresh apples.
Cmd-F “cider”: No hits
Cmd-F “apples”: No hits
I beg to differ.
Of course, now that you’ve pointed it out, I know what you mean—or do I? I still don’t have anything remotely like a procedure for making cider. But tell me: have you made hard cider from nothing but fresh apples? If so, how did it turn out?
A second’s searching found this website: howtomakehardcider.com. The author of this site says:
This would seem to refer to the sort of method which you imply. (Right? I’m not quite sure… which is another problem with your claim!) Do you disagree with this fellow’s assessment? When he says that what you need to make hard cider is “Brewing yeast (NOT bread yeast)”, is he wrong?
Are you, in fact, claiming that either you personally, or someone whom you consider quite reliable (as opposed to, for example, “some guy on reddit”), have made hard cider from nothing but fresh apples, and it turned out well (drinkable, delicious, etc.)?
Edit: I was going to make the following point in a follow-up comment, but since Benquo has chosen to disengage (which is certainly his right), I’ll put this here, for the benefit of others reading it:
Suppose that I, having read Benquo’s post, have this insight that “Oh! If wild yeast is everywhere, and it eats sugar, and it produces alcohol, then… I can… just kind of… leave apples sitting around… and they’ll turn into cider?? Right?!”
And suppose I try doing this. What will happen?
What will happen is that I will produce something terrible, and I will be lucky if I don’t give myself food poisoning (due to mold, e.g.).
And then—assuming the experience doesn’t put me off cider-making permanently—I will go online, and I will search for instructions on how to make cider (such as the site I linked above). And those instructions are going to describe a process that is much more complex than the one Benquo implies, and this process will require specialized equipment, and techniques which I could never simply deduce myself from first principles; and, most importantly of all, they will require commercially produced yeast.
But, of course, I could have simply done that in the first place. The “zetetic” explanation—and the misguided attempt to deduce some practical technique from it—adds nothing.
From the first site, I think a clearer statement is from this more specific page, which says
Indeed. And this, of course, goes to my point: you need to know and understand the specific domain in question in great detail (far greater than that provided in the OP) to make informed decisions, to accomplish anything.
Not aiming to be a full response, but doesn’t the StackExchange link you shared basically say that non-sterile cider isn’t a real issue and that the straightforward thing should basically work?
The second paragraph seems to indicate a problem with using wild yeasts, but my model is that this is basically just about taste, and not about any real risks.
Ah, let me clarify: I linked that page not to claim that contamination/poisoning is a risk, but merely to support the claim that using wild yeast would not yield a satisfactory result (which is why I linked it from the part of the my comment’s text that was about results, not the part about risk).
Where do you think commercially-produced yeast comes from?
I think it comes from special temples called laboratories or factories, where it is produced by a mysterious Scientific-Industrial priesthood. Why? Where do you think it comes from?
Do you mean to imply that you can, in the comfort of your own home, produce yeast which is as effective, for all the applications for which it’s used, as this stuff? (Or, even, all the applications for which it’s used by a home baker?) This is an exciting claim! Have you attempted to make money from being able to do so? Or, if you are not inclined to monetize this skill—certainly an understandable position!—would you consider writing a post detailing the process?
It seems like you’re trying to misunderstand here, and being sarcastic about it, and I’m not going to engage further.