\nI was off bread baking for awhile, for a few reasons. One was we didn’t have a working oven; another was a low-carb diet I was on. However, with both those obstacles cleared, I got back to baking bread last Thursday. I don’t know when the last of it got eaten, but there’s none left, so I guess it turned out all right.<\/p>\n
\nI really like baking bread, and have written numerous posts about it (see my post from Nov 25, 2017<\/a>, for instance). Yet, like any habit one leaves for awhile, it might take a bit of extra concentration to restart.<\/p>\n \nOne situation that confronted me immediately last Thursday was the yeast: it had two different “use by” dates at different places on the jar. One said a date in 2019, the other, a date in 2022. Either way, it seemed to be way overdue. Moreover, it said on the jar something to the effect of “Use within six months.”<\/p>\n \nWhen one bakes all the time, and keeps using the same container of yeast, one might not care about such things; the yeast worked last week, so one expects it will this time. Intuitively, one might not expect yeast can lose function in just a week.<\/p>\n \nYet, three or six years on, might yeast lose its activity? Not likely, I thought, so decided to proof it.<\/p>\n \nAs it turned out, the yeast proofed fine; subsequently, the dough raised as it should have, and so on.<\/p>\n \nHow yeast could have two use-by dates on it, three years apart, might be one mystery. Perhaps the whole situation is academic. However, the bread was real.<\/p>\nJack of Oracle Tutoring by Jack and Diane,<\/a> Campbell River, BC.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Self-tutoring about baking: the tutor mentions using “old” yeast to make bread. I was off bread baking for awhile, for a few reasons. One was we didn’t have a working oven; another was a low-carb diet I was on. However, …<\/p>\n