Yeast

microorganisms · fungi · single-celled · baking

Teeny tiny life. Yeast is so small you need a microscope to see it, but it's actually a living fungus, just like the mushrooms in a forest, except way smaller and made of only one cell.

Makes bread fluffy. When you add yeast to bread dough, it eats the sugar and releases gas bubbles that make the dough rise and become light and airy instead of dense and heavy.

Creates alcohol. Yeast turns fruit juice and grains into wine and beer by eating the sugar and turning it into alcohol, a process people have used for thousands of years.

Copies itself fast. Yeast reproduces by budding, which means a new yeast cell grows right out of the old one like a tiny bubble, and it can make copies of itself super quickly.

Ancient and abundant. Yeast has existed for hundreds of millions of years, and there are at least 1,500 different known species living all around us in nature.