if yeast turns sugar into alcohol during the fermentation process, why isn’t there alcohol in baked goods?
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Good points but a bit more specific –
The production of alcohol takes time as it’s related to the chemistry of yeast *eating* the sugars in the dough. So a few basic starting points-
First of all, grain does not contain readily available sugars, it contains complex chemicals called “starch” which yeast cannot eat. In producing a beer you need to first chemically decompose those starches into simple sugars, you don’t do this extensively in baked goods. As an example, put a teaspoon of flour into your mouth, you aren’t going to get an orgy of sweetness. That’s because the sugars in flour are still bound up as starches. This just limits the amount of fermenting the yeast can do, which limits the amount of alcohol produced.
Secondly, in brewing conditions, it takes several hours/days for yeast to produce alcohol. In doing they breakdown the grain structures because they are literally eating it. You don’t want this in baking as this would destroy the gluten fibers that provide the structure that cause the baked good to rise. If you allowed the yeast sufficient time to breakdown the gluten it’s called “over-proofing” the dough and the baked good wouldn’t rise, it would inflate a bit and then deflate as it bakes. You’d get a puddle, not bread.
Finally- it does produce alcohol though. If you have a bread starter, a sample of living yeast active and ready to ferment and create bread, that starter creates a little puddle of alcoholic juice. You do want to remove the puddle though as the alcohol can poison and kill the yeast.
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