Kugelhopf: a reassuring introduction to baking with yeast

Yeast scares even some of the most proficient cooks. I know home cooks and professionals alike, food writers and fanatics, who wouldn’t think twice about deboning a duck or rustling up a feast for 14, who quail the moment they hear the word ‘yeast’. I understand the trepidation: yeast is a living thing and, as such, capricious and unpredictable. Its behaviour is influenced by the season, the warmth, the humidity and how it is handled. Put like that, it sounds quite relatable, doesn’t it?

Despite its intimidating reputation, yeast is actually pretty good at showing us what’s going on: it visibly inflates the dough or batter before cooking. And if the mixture hasn’t yet grown, it often just needs more time. This is an exercise in patience and trust.

Generally, we think of yeasted doughs as being breads, and those using chemical raising agents (baking powder, bicarb) as cakes. This isn’t always the case: some loaves and cakes blur the lines. Soda bread is made by combining bicarbonate of soda with an acidic ingredient like buttermilk to cause a fast rise in the oven which doesn’t need proving; it has a different texture to yeasted bread, and can be quite sweet, almost cake-like. Polish babka and Italian panettone are yeasted and generally considered breads, even though they contain chocolate or candied peel or are soaked in heavy syrup.

Before baking powder was invented in the 19th century by Alfred Bird (of Bird’s custard fame), yeast was often used to leaven cakes. Other methods required serious elbow grease: billowing eggs up into foamy clouds and then carefully folding them in so as not to undo your hard work, for example. Far from being the masochistic cake-maker’s choice, a yeasted cake was the easy option.

Received wisdom is that enriched doughs are trickier, even more mercurial than their simpler cousins, because the fats and sugars complicate matters by inhibiting the yeast and preventing gluten development.