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this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2024
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expectationvsreality
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I've heard this a few times and have always wondered - what do Europeans use in bread to feed the yeast and make it rise, if not sugar?
Flour
Flour doesn't feed yeast to make it rise.
It does.
Look up sourdough recipes. The bacteria and yeasts will eagerly eat some longer-chain carbs. They aren't picky. Same goes for commercial supermarket yeasts.
It does. The bread I make is only flour, yeast, water and salt. Toss them together and wait 2 hours you have a risen bread
Starches are just chains of sugar.
You can test for yourself if starches are sugar.
Grab a spoon of oat flakes, no milk no nothing, but em in your mouth and chew and chew. It's a fair bit of work, but soon you'll taste the sweetness.
Yeast does rise from "sugar" but it's actually the glucose contained within the flour. Bread yeast does not directly feed on sucrose. The process of breaking down starches into sugars is actually what gives bread a lot of it's flavor.
That said lots of European bread uses sugar too, just in lower percentages. American white bread is quite similar to French pain de mie.