How did the early pioneers find yeast to leaven their bread?

Answer 1

Early settlers (also called pioneers) in North America used several methods to leaven their bread. These included potash (Pearlash) , Saleratus (potassium or sodium bicarbonate), and baking powder (first made commercially in America by Eben Horsford in 1856, under the trade names "Horsford's Yeast Powder", then "Rumford's Baking Powder."

Chuck wagon cooks of cowboy fame regularly used baking powder for making biscuits and pancakes for the boys.

Not only is baking bread without commercial yeast not new, it's actually incredibly old: bread was being baked without commercial yeast by the Egyptians about 4,500 years ago. Some unnamed baker discovered that by leaving the usual flour and water mixture to sit for awhile before baking, the dough would ferment. And as a natural outgrowth of the fermentation process (the release of carbon dioxide), the bread would rise, and become higher and lighter. In time, the Egyptians came to bake dozens of different breads, all using some variation on this basic fermentation process.

Answer 2

They didn't. Probably they used a 'starter' like sourdough. 'Wild' yeast in the air was captured and cultivated to make the starter. Or sometimes yeast from beer or wine was used to leaven bread.

Dried yeast wasn't developed until World War 2.

Answer 3

Dry yeast are living microorganisms in the fungus family. When yeast is mixed throughly throughout the flower/water mixture and allowed to "rise", as the yeast microorganisms eat some of the mixture, they release carbon dioxide (CO2) that are caputured in small bubbles in the dough. After the dough rises to your satisfaction, baking the dough into bread kills all the yeast and stiffens the bubble walls into the texture of the resulting bread. Mmmmm... good stuff.