Latest / Spotlight English: Advanced / Amazing Ancient Yeast (Advanced Program)

Transcript

Amazing Ancient Yeast (Advanced Program) · Spotlight English: Advanced

• 0:03
  Welcome to Spotlight Advanced. I'm Bruce Gulland and I'm Megan Nolette. Spotlight uses
• 0:11
  a special English method of broadcasting. It is easier for people to understand no
• 0:16
  matter where in the world they live. A man is in his kitchen.
• 0:30
  His name is Samous Blackly. In front of him is a large flat wooden
• 0:35
  board. Blackly covers the board in a special powder. It is a kind
• 0:41
  of flower made from a grain called iron corn. This is one of the
• 0:45
  oldest forms of wheat. Then he takes a large ball of dough from a
• 0:51
  bowl. He begins to push and pull the dough, kneading it into a
• 0:55
  round shape. The sweet smell of bread fills the room. Then, after
• 1:02
  some time he places the dough in an earthen to Jean, and he puts
• 1:07
  it into a hot place to bake. The dough begins to bake. Soon
• 1:14
  it will be a large loaf of bread. But this is no ordinary bread.
• 1:21
  Blackly is making the bread with ancient grains and ancient methods. But Blackly
• 1:26
  is also using a special yeast. The yeast will make the bread rise or
• 1:33
  expand. But this yeast is not the kind people normally use. This yeast
• 1:38
  is also ancient. Using a special process. Blackly took the yeast from Egyptian
• 1:46
  baking bowls. It is the same yeast used four thousand, five hundred years
• 1:52
  ago. Yeast is one of the most important ingredients ever discovered. People use
• 2:00
  it to make bread, alcoholic drinks, and fermented foods. People have been
• 2:06
  using yeast for almost ten thousand years. Today's spotlight is on the history of
• 2:13
  yeast. Yeast is not an ordinary ingredient like salt or pepper, or sugar
• 2:21
  or flour. Yeast is a very small living organism. It is a kind
• 2:27
  of fungus related to mushrooms. You cannot see it unless you look at it
• 2:32
  through a microscope. Yeast feeds on sugars. When yeast eats these sugars,
• 2:39
  it produces alcohol and carbon dioxide. This process is called fermentation. Carbon dioxide
• 2:47
  is what causes bread to rise, and the alcohol gives bread its special flavor.
• 2:55
  There are hundreds of different kinds of yeast are useful for making food,
• 3:01
  but others do not work as well. One popular kind of yeast makes a
• 3:07
  bread called sour dough. Sour dough has a special tart flavor. Other yeasts
• 3:15
  make alcoholic beverages. Koji is a yeast used in Japan. The Japanese use
• 3:22
  it to make a drink called sake. But there are even yeasts that people
• 3:27
  do not use much. These are called wild yeasts. Humans first started using
• 3:35
  yeast in food before people invented writing. Experts think the first use of yeast
• 3:43
  was probably an accident. Wild yeast probably fell into a sweet drink and the
• 3:49
  drink started to ferment. When people tasted it, they found it was good,
• 3:54
  so they took some of the drink and used it to make more.
• 4:00
  They were taking yeast and growing more, though they did not know it.
• 4:04
  These were the first brewers. From this point, yeast began to change.
• 4:12
  People began breeding the yeast. If they made something that they liked, they
• 4:16
  would repeat the process, and they started breeding different yeasts for different things.
• 4:24
  The yeast began to specialize. Kevin Vastrappen is a scientist at the University of
• 4:30
  Leuven. He studies yeast genetics. He spoke to Science Daily about this process.
• 4:41
  Sometimes early brewers had a very good fermentation. They were smart enough to
• 4:47
  harvest the yeast. They used it to start the next batch, even if
• 4:54
  they did not know what was in it. Reusing the yeast to make beer
• 4:59
  separated it from nature. The yeasts were changing in the brewery, remember Shamus
• 5:06
  Blackly from the beginning of this program. When Blackly started making his bread,
• 5:12
  he was excited because of these changes. The Egyptian yeast was a lot like
• 5:17
  sour dough bread. But what was yeast like almost five thousand years ago?
• 5:25
  Blackly did not know what it would taste like. When he finally tasted his
• 5:30
  bread, Blackly wrote on Twitter about his experience. The bread is light and
• 5:36
  full of air, especially for a loaf made from these ingredients. The smell
• 5:43
  and flavor are incredible. It is very different. You can easily tell the
• 5:47
  difference even if you're not excited about bread. The first evidence of people using
• 5:59
  yeast comes from China. The ancient Chinese made a drink called qui. They
• 6:04
  used water, honey, rice, and fruit. Drinks made with yeast had
• 6:11
  a lot of advantages. Of course, people liked the effects of alcohol,
• 6:16
  but drinks made with yeast were also safer than water. In ancient times,
• 6:23
  drinking water could be dangerous. It could make a person sick very easily,
• 6:30
  but alcohol kills many of the diseases that live in water so you could drink
• 6:35
  it without getting sick. Many civilizations used this to their advantage. In ancient
• 6:43
  Greece, people mixed water with strong wine. This killed the bacteria in the
• 6:48
  water, and because it was mixed, they could drink it most of the
• 6:54
  day without being drunk. But making foods with yeast makes them more delicious and
• 7:01
  healthier. These are fermented foods. The yeast breaks down sugars that may be
• 7:08
  difficult to digest. Kafir is a fermented drink made from milk. It is
• 7:15
  from eastern Europe. For most people, milk is very difficult to digest after
• 7:19
  childhood. This is because of a sugar called lactose, which most people cannot
• 7:26
  digest, but the yeast in kafir breaks lactose down. Because of this,
• 7:31
  kaffir has almost no lactose in it. The yeast makes milk safe for people
• 7:38
  who cannot drink milk. Many ancient people also used yeast to help in food
• 7:45
  storage. Fermenting foods in this way is called pickling. Fermenting or pickling makes
• 7:53
  food last longer, but it also changes the flavor. Kim is one of
• 8:00
  the most famous pickled foods from Korea. Kimchi is fermented vegetables using cabbage and
• 8:07
  radish. In ancient times, people made kimchi so that these vegetables would last
• 8:15
  through the winter, But soon people began to make kimchi because they liked the
• 8:20
  taste. Today we do not need yeast to clean water or to preserve food,
• 8:30
  but over the years humans have developed a taste for fermented foods. We
• 8:35
  eat them now because we like them. We continue to make them because they
• 8:41
  are part of our traditions and they can connect us to people who lived thousands
• 8:46
  of years ago. When he made his bread, Blackly wrote on Twitter,
• 8:54
  this is very exciting. I am so amazed that it worked. It is
• 8:58
  such a mudgical thing. We can share food in a rather genuine way with
• 9:03
  our distant ancestors. Do you use yeast in your diet? What fermented foods
• 9:13
  do you eat? Do you make any yourself? Tell us about it on
• 9:18
  our website at www dot Spotlight English dot com. You can also find us
• 9:26
  on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. The writer of this program
• 9:33
  was Dan Chrisman. The producer was Mitio Ozaki. The voices you heard were
• 9:39
  from the United Kingdom and the United States. All quotes were adapted for this
• 9:43
  program and voiced by Spotlight. This program is called Amazing Ancient Yeast. Visit
• 9:52
  our website to download our free official app for Android and Apple devices. We
• 9:58
  hope you can join us again for the next Spotlight program. Goodbye,