murdering yeast

(Credit for the title of this post goes to Komal) I’ve accidentally killed a few things in my life like plants, bugs, and a poor old rabbit.  But this is my first time killing yeast. The crime was committed last night at around 6:00pm in my effort to make pizza dough. After consulting briefly with Angel for a quick dough recipe that would rise in a minimal amount of time (I had hungry mouths to feed), I was told, and I quote:

“lol
can’t force bread to rise!”

So profound! Angel, can you lend me some of your patience and wisdom?

So back to the crime: I mixed the dry ingredients, heated some water, and waited for it to reach the right temperature. The optimal yeast proofing temperature is between 110 to 115 degrees. Since I can never tell how long that really takes on the stove, I use a cooking thermometer for a quick temperature read. Last night, was no different. However, due to the lack of above said patience, I ignored the high temp read and dumped the pack of yeast in anyway. I was feeling invincible I guess and thought that the yeast could handle a couple (or 15) degrees higher than usual.

Well, the yeast doesn’t like hot. After twiddling my thumbs for 10 minutes, my small bowl of water, yeast, and honey, looked like muddy puddle water (instead of a foamy beer top). The yeast was dead; I had killed it (them?). RIP little guys.

To redeem myself, I started all over again; this time making sure I let the water cool before adding another pack of yeast. Patience paid off (no surprise there) and my foamy mixture was ready to be dumped in the flour. A process that should have taken 10 minutes had I done it right, ended up adding 25-30 minutes more to my prep time. A lesson learnt.

At the end of the day there were still two good pizza pies on the table. But I’m sure Komal and Jake would have liked to eat it before feeling like starving sailors on an abandoned ship (good analogy?)

Angel, it indeed cannot be forced.