Unleash the Yeast!

As someone who cooks, a lot, and a wide variety of things, it surprises people when I tell them that I’ve rarely baked bread. As a kid, sure, at mom’s knee. But rarely since. And I sense this is all about to change.

Now, clearly there will be those who pop into their corner bakery once a day and buy a superb loaf, and who never buy the cheap sliced stuff. But a glance at any bread section in any supermarket makes one thing very clear: most of us succumb to the easy option. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be all those loaves flying off the shelves, every day, in their thousand upon thousand. And yes, there have been times when I’ve even gone for the cheapest of those loaves, the old-fashioned breadline “government loaf”, because there are times when life decides certain things on our behalf. And there’s no shame in that.

But having spent just one morning amid the pleasure of making fresh bread, just the other day, I find myself wanting to change my lifestyle in the aforementioned small but somehow significant way. And I’m imagining the kitchen filled with yeasty, toasty aromas every Sunday as we bake our bready kneads (sorry) for the week ahead.

If bread is so easy to make (it is), inexpensive to make (it’s not cheaper than bought bread but it’s by no means expensive), and given how well bread keeps, shouldn’t we all be taking up bread-making as a weekend hobby?

There’s a lump of grey, clammy, wet yeast looking at me when I open my fridge door right now. It will keep for up to two weeks in there, I’m told, so best we get on with making quite a few loaves. Given that the recipe I was poring over this morning calls for only 14g, there’s a lot of bread potential in that lump.

It was not so much the ciabatta lesson we had last week that brought the thought on, as the news that I could buy fresh, wet yeast at my local supermarket deli counters. Maybe everyone else knew that, but not being a practised breadmaker, it hadn’t occurred to me to ask.

So I did me a bit of Googling and found, on a wide range of websites (to be sure I wasn’t to be a victim of misinformation), a few bits and pieces we need to know if we’re about to embark on a bit of a bread making binge:

• Don’t refrigerate bread, but do freeze it.


• It freezes brilliantly and can be toasted from frozen. (And I can vouch for that, done it often.)


• It is best stored at room temperature and it will actually go stale faster when refrigerated than when kept in a bread bin at room temperature.


• Experts advise us to store it at room temperature for up to two days, then wrap it up in tinfoil or clingfilm and freeze it. When you’re ready to use it, thaw, and heat for a short while in a hot oven to reveal a seemingly fresh, crisp loaf (or bread roll).


• Bread that is on the wane can become perky and seemingly fresh once toasted. It can also be turned into breadcrumbs, and they too can be frozen.


• Having said that, if like me you live in the Karoo, very soon “room temperature” during the day is going to be under 10°C, even less than 5°C. Optimum for bread, they say, is around 20°C. So – the freezer beckons.

• Oil will reward you with a softer crust, but still some crunch.


• Water will give you a crispier crunch.


• Egg wash will give your loaf a lovely colour and a soft crust.


• Milk wash will have a similar result to an egg wash.


• Melted butter brushed on the dough before it’s baked will reward you with a golden colour, great crunch and the added aroma that butter gives to anything.