Bake it!

In science the Year 5s have been learning about how yeast works.  We now understand that yeast is an active substance and is ‘alive’.  Yeast is activated or woken up by warm water and then sugar acts as its food.  We learnt this through carrying out a series of experiments looking at how to increase the amount of froth created by combining warm water, yeast and sugar.  We also experimented to find out if yeast could blow up a balloon.  Through these experiments we learnt that yeast and sugar produce a gas called carbon dioxide.  This is what created the froth and blew up the balloon.

We have now moved on to our food technology lessons and we have started with baking bread.  We looked at how yeast acts as a rising agent when baking bread, and how leaving yeast out results in a flatter, harder, heavier bread.