There is a Subway Restaurant at my Office building. Every morning when I
pass by, the aroma of freshly baked bread greets my nostrils and
flirts with my taste buds. The experience is exuberating.
As a curious man, I am tempted to go deep and see how this delicious and
tongue tingling food is made. Here it is... You take some rich flour and kneed
it into a loose dough by mixing water, salt, sugar and yeast. Let the yeast make
merry and ferment the dough and then place it in a preheated oven. Wait for some
time... Lo! the mouth watering aroma will start emanating and finally the golden
brown crusted tasty bread.
The magic ingredient of the recipe is YEAST. Yeast is nothing but fungus/
bacteria. As the yeast consumes the nutrients in dough it produces CO2 which
forms pockets of air within and fluffs the dough. In the fermentation process
nutrients are broken down into smaller (but over-stretched) and more flavoured and
tastier substances.
To our joy, the colonies and civilisations of yeast are wiped out at their
acme every morning as they bake in earthen ovens across the earth. Yet, the
yeast learns no lesson. It consumes, grows and multiplies in the dough pans as if
it were in an infinite resource. Its end is sealed in its DNA. It is destined to be annihilated one way or the other.
I pity poor yeast. But soon this pity turns into self pity. Our role on earth is nothing more than that of yeast. To the joy of hungry
God, the global dough has now well risen and ready to go in hot oven. Aroma of
freshly baked bread will hit God's nostrils soon and will be received by his
olfactory receptors to titillate his taste buds.
OMG!, Bon Appetite! We can feel the heat.
