Structured water - grade school science fair experiment.

I found a jar of Dry Active Baking Yeast in the back of the fridge - will it grow better with tap or structured water?

…or will it grow at all, as the expiration date is Aug 2013. Yes, I have been staying at my parents for a few years now, but somehow, that back corner of the fridge never got cleaned out until yesterday.

Using glass jars to make structured water with sunshine does seem to work better, taste better. The sun tea I made with rooibus was really good and did seem faster than the pure water. I left water in plastic jugs in the sun for three days and it seemed to make a slight difference, an improvement. Water in a glass jar left for two days seemed significantly different, better than the tap water, or the plastic jug water.

I recently spent some money on a new water softener and a large activated charcoal filter for whole house filtering, but the water softener effect is still noticeable. I am sorry I didn’t spend more time investigating tap water systems.

For the simple experiment, given the recent interest and jars of structured water and 2013 baking yeast, I thought, science fair fun! Let’s see if the yeast will grow at all… and if so, will it do better with the glass jar structured water or tap water?

Will old baking yeast grow at all? or grow better in Structured water compared to water softener tap water?

So far, a couple hours later, not really growing is the result in the tap water based on not much aroma, and barely growing to not growing is the result for the structured water (which started out as tap water too, same water, just left in the sun two days in a glass jar). That bowl has had some changing patterns on the surface, like gas swirls may have formed too. I am going to leave the bowls a little longer as I didn’t warm the water at all, which is standard for proofing yeast.

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Aside - proofing yeast, or bread, is a pre-growth stage where you give the dry active yeast a little water and flour to get it going well, ‘proving’ it’s alive too. Then the dough, once formed is allowed to rise for a half hour or so, as the yeast grows throughout the dough. The ball of dough doubles in size and needs to be formed into loaves and allowed to proof, rise, a little longer before baking.

If the proofing stages go too long, then the yeast can overgrow, overfeed, use up the sweetness in the flour and you end up with a sourdough bread if you left it overnight instead of just too long in the bowl (spills all over the table as it grows out in giant puff ball of dough).

Trivia about me - my early work career was a gourmet yeast dough baker - hand rolled loaves, rolls, baguettes, croissant, Danish and other puff pastry treats. Anything with yeast. Other bakers focused more on the sweets and finicky decorated desserts - not my preference. Dough is alive and fun to work with and more manual labor than finicky precise detail work.

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I started a part two to the science fair experiment. I also had an approximately two year old bag of dry active yeast that I had bought with plans to bake for my parents. That didn’t happen and that yeast is also in the fridge. I could bake bread with it, but it didn’t proof as well as fresher yeast should. The Structured Water batch started some action quickly and the tap water batch got a little active about 10-20 minutes later and still isn’t as alive looking as the Structured water bowl.

Approximately two year old Dry Active yeast, started frothing almost immediately (expected) (1 tablespoon with 1 tablespoon of sorghum flour and a half cup of tap water or structured tap water).

The two year old yeast after about a half hour - this isn’t ‘proving’ to be very active yeast but I think I could bake with it - either batch of this yeast. The 2013 yeast - maybe the structured water bowl with enough warmth, sweet flour and coaxing, but probably not. I have left them with a timer for an hour to see if there is more change.

I realize that I am a gardener of life - I like working with helping things to grow, whether flowers, sassafras saplings, bread dough, or baby humans and older humans. It feels good to help things grow.

Structured water does seem to be supportive of life and able to be made with a glass jar of water and two days of summer sunshine (it was nice, high 80s, low 90s).

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An aside - yeast bread lovers - yeast products may not be that healthy for us, especially if struggling with a fungal infection.

A protocol for chronic yeast issues is available in this post:

The closing to that post: “A carbohydrate rich diet supports fungal infection as they need sugar or starch for energy. Yeasts used to make bread and beer may be part of the risk as well as the extra carbohydrates.

Fungal species are also seen within cancer cells.”

Disclaimer: This information is being shared for educational purposes within the guidelines of Fair Use and is not intended to provide individual health guidance.