 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 From “How Bread Works”Bread is a bio-chemical technology for turning wheat flour into something tasty! If you pick up a slice of bread and examine it closely, you can see that it is full of air holes. This makes it spongy and soft. You will also see that bread is moist. If you let a slice of bread sit out on the counter for a day you will realize just how moist fresh bread is! Bakers use two simple facts of life to create soft, spongy, moist bread: First, they use the fact that yeast (a single-cell fungus) will eat sugar, and from the sugar create alcohol and carbon dioxide gas as waste products. The carbon dioxide gas created by yeast is what gives bread its airy texture (and the alcohol, which burns off during baking, leaves behind an important component of bread’s flavor). Second, wheat flour, if mixed with water and kneaded, becomes very elastic. The flour and water mixture in bread becomes stretchy like a balloon is stretchy because of a protein in wheat known as gluten. Gluten gives bread dough the ability to capture the carbon dioxide produced by yeast in tiny flour balloons. |
|
|
 |
|
|
| Rensselaer Magazine: June 2002 | ||||
| President's View | Your Mail | From the Archives | Hawk Talk | Class Notes Features |
| Front Page | At Rensselaer | Milestones |
| In Memoriam | Making a Difference | Staying Connected |
| Rensselaer Home Page | RPInfo | AlumServ Home Page |
|
|
Opinions expressed in these pages do not necessarily reflect the views of the editors or the policies of the Institute. |
| © 2002 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. All rights reserved worldwide. | |
| Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), 110 8th St., Troy, NY 12180. (518) 276-6000 Page designed by Marketing and Media Relations. Contact Jane Van Ryan, Assistant Vice President of Communications. Please direct technical questions regarding this site to rpinfo-support@rpi.edu. |
|