Timeline for Difference between fermentation and leavening?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
12 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| May 13, 2015 at 22:46 | vote | accept | JLandsberger | ||
| May 12, 2015 at 18:41 | comment | added | Joe | To give a possibly better example of a fuzzy category -- consider 'sandwich'. Is a hamburger and bun a sandwich? A hot dog and bun? Gyro? Quesidilla? Pupusa? Burrito? a piece of toast between two pieces of bread? a tuna boat (tuna salad on bread, no top)? For those who say you need two slices of bread, so that only the hamburger would count, you've also managed to exclude many hoagies/grinders/subs where the roll is only split before filling. | |
| May 12, 2015 at 18:30 | comment | added | Joe | Athanasius : it's fermentation, but when someone mentions 'ferment', you picture in your mind something that typically takes a long time and imparts significant flavor or structural change -- saurkraut, cheese, sour pickles, kimchi, sourdough, beer, wine, etc. Wonderbread and the like are on the far fringes of the category as although the yeast might've eaten the added sugar, it hasn't had a chance to act on the starches within the wheat ... so it's barely fermented. | |
| May 12, 2015 at 18:26 | comment | added | Chris Macksey | @Joe I have to agree with @Athanasius; if the first step (sugar -> carbon dioxide + alcohol) happens, then fermentation has happened. Now, certainly in beer making, you want the fermentation to go on longer so that the yeast are forced to break down more and more sources of food (rather than just the "easy" sugars) to add flavour and character. While that is a subtly different kind of fermentation, it's still fermentation. | |
| May 12, 2015 at 18:24 | history | edited | Chris Macksey | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Add additional info about lactic acid fermentation
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| May 12, 2015 at 18:22 | comment | added | Athanasius | @Joe - You've made me curious. If the gases which cause bread to rise are not "fermentation," what do "many people" consider them to be? (This isn't argumentative; I'm just confused by your comment. I think of fermentation as a chemical process, so whether it happens for 30 minutes or 30 days doesn't change what's going on.) | |
| May 12, 2015 at 18:16 | comment | added | Joe | If you have a fast rise from yeast, although there is some fermentation happening, there's so little of the chemical byproducts that many people might not consider this to fermentation. (it's an issue of how you view groupings -- are we going with classical categories a.la Aristotle, or more fuzzy categories a.la Lakoff | |
| May 12, 2015 at 18:11 | comment | added | Chris Macksey | I've edited to add a bit more context, hopefully without adding confusion. | |
| May 12, 2015 at 18:11 | history | edited | Chris Macksey | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Added additional clarification that fermentation is more general, and mention of additional flavour compounds
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| May 12, 2015 at 18:09 | comment | added | Chris Macksey | True; I didn't want to confuse the matter by adding lactic acid fermentation by bacteria to the mix, or the intricate details of the different types of yeasts (e.g. brettanomyces yeasts) that can yield very different characters due to their other byproducts, so I stuck within the confines of the specific question asked :-) | |
| May 12, 2015 at 18:06 | comment | added | Athanasius | Great concise answer. I would only clarify that fermentation is also a more general process that can also involve bacteria and result in various byproducts (gases and alcohol as you mention, but also acids). In the context of bread in this question, fermentation can produce not only leavening in the form of gas but flavor as well in various chemical byproducts (most noticeable, for example, in sourdough where fermentation produces significant acidity). | |
| May 12, 2015 at 17:57 | history | answered | Chris Macksey | CC BY-SA 3.0 |