Yeast

Bertha Whitmire of Kelso, Wash., requested a recipe for Cheddar Cheese Bread. She wrote that she had tasted a slice of the bread at a senior potluck dinner in Longview, Wash. "I tried to find out who made it," she said, "but to no avail."Pam Simon of Laurel came to the rescue with a recipe from Bernard Clayton's "New Complete Book of Breads." "I make it frequently for gift giving, and it always gets rave reviews," she said.Cheddar Cheese BreadMakes 2 medium loaves2 cups water1/4 cup sugar2 teaspoonssalt2 tablespoons butter, at room temperature1/2 cup nonfat dry milk12 ounces (3 cups)

Roy S. Sell of Johnstown, Pa., asked, "Does someone have a recipe for Tuscany bread? Tuscany is that region in Italy. Thank you very much."Shirley M. Greene of Latrobe, Pa., responded with a recipe. "I have baked this bread many times and it is delicious. I got this recipe from PBS TV station WQED in Pittsburgh, Pa., a number of years ago, on a cooking show called 'Ciao Italian,' hosted by Mary Ann Esposito."Makes one large loaf1 tablespoon dry yeast1/2 cup warm water1 cup flour1 1/2 teaspoons dry yeast1 1/4 cups water1 teaspoon salt4 to 5 cups all-purpose flourTo make sponge (bread-dough mixture)

A whiff of pizza baking in the oven promises good food and good times. One of the best things about making your own pizza is the freedom to create break-out-of-the-box combinations that redefine good pizza. A case in point is something you'll probably not find at the supermarket or local pizzeria: a vibrant vegetarian spinoff of Chicago-style pizza.Wilted escarole adds color and flavor to a meatless pizza topping that's as visually appealing as it is good-tasting, while cornmeal gives the crust extra crunch.

Olive orchards blanketing the hills of Provence, France, inspired a regional bread: fougasse, a yeasted flatbread reminiscent of Italian focaccia.For herb fougasse: Omit olives. Press chopped fresh sage leaves or rosemary sprigs into the top of the loaf before the second rising.Olive FougasseMakes 2 flatbreads (12 - 16 servings)1 package active dry yeast1/2 cup warm water (110 to 115 degrees)2 teaspoons sugar1/2 cup warm milk (110 to 115 degrees)1/4 cup olive oil1/4 teaspoon salt2 3/4 to 3 cups unbleached flour1/4 cup chopped, pitted green olives (not stuffed)

Economical and lower in fat and sugar than most butter cakes or quick breads, this yeast-leavened coffeecake is topped with a lemon glaze. A useful tool for preparing the lemon zest for the cake, glaze and garnish is a citrus zester. Unlike a metal grater, a zester removes the colored portion of the peel but doesn't cut into the bitter white pith. The zest can be left whole or chopped.Cole Publishing GroupLemon CoffeecakeServes 8 to 102 packages active dry yeast1/4 cup 110-degree water1/3 cup sugar1/2 cup 100-degree milk3/4 teaspoon salt1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg2 teaspoons finely chopped or grated lemon zest1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract2/3 cup butter, softened4 cups unbleached flour4 eggslemon zest, for garnishSprinkle yeast over the water in large bowl of electric mixer.

I COMPARED NOTES on bread baking with a couple of pros recently. For almost an hour we discussed dough, flour and glazes, the finishes that are brushed on the top of loaves.As an amateur who bakes bread about twice a week, I didn't need to be sold on the joy of bread-making. So when this pair of professional bakers, one French and one Italian, came to town to promote their new book "Ultimate Bread" (DK Publishing, 1998, $25), I skipped over the "why-would- anyone-want-to-bake-bread" part of the interview.

Game show of lifeAthlete's foot is caused by:A - wet floorsB - bad karmaC - yeastD - germsE - sweatF - NikesAnswer: C: Those itchy feet with that skin that peels and stings are caused by fungus growing on your skin. All yeasts are kinds of fungi!Where do...The holes in Swiss cheese come from?Torey CanaleWestfield, WisconsinCheese is a way of preserving milk. That was very important before refrigerators were invented. Cheeses are preserved with different bacteria and molds. They cure milk into solid cheese.

Two scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology believe they have discovered a "senescence factor" that builds up in dividing cells and can indicate signs of aging.The cause of aging, they say in a study published yesterday, may lie in a simple mistake in cell division that causes circular bits of redundant DNA to accumulate within the nuclei of cells. This "junk" builds up to levels equaling needed DNA, clogging normal cellular machinery.The evidence so far comes only from brewer's yeast cells, but David A. Sinclair and Leonard Guarente believe that the same process probably occurs in mammals, including humans.

SLIPPAGE HAPPENS. One day you are sailing along seemingly on top of the world, then the next day you are stumbling. Your jump shot can't hit the basket. You're confusing adjectives with adverbs. Your bread dough won't rise.It happened to me recently. For some reason my homemade bread wasn't turning out the way it should.Instead of being light, airy and textured, the bread was dense. It was beyond chewy. It was thick, lumpish, virtually impenetrable. Even making croutons out of it, the fallback position for most fallen breads, was out of the question.

Happy New Year.This very first day of 1997 will most surely begin with sincere and inevitable New Year resolutions. One easy resolution for this day is to try a new recipe or two. Here are a couple worth trying.A quick hot yeast roll that "had a marvelous texture and was made with Quaker Instant Grits" was the request of Deanna Lanham Kaminski of Owensboro, Ky. She wrote that she had gotten the recipe 20 to 25 years from a cooking school held in a high school but lost it."I called the Quaker Oats people and the extension office here but no one had any knowledge of it. Hope you can help," she said.

Linda Watkins of Knoxville, Tenn., was looking for a recipe for a type of cookie that her grandmother used to make. She called them "old butter cookies." She would take dough cut into squares and put a pat of old butter and some sugar into the center, then fold the corners into the center and bake. Alice Nulle of Woodstock, Ill., sent in a recipe for what she calls Butter Squares. It sounds just like what Watkins' grandmother used to make except, thankfully, it does not call for old butter.

Everyone and every place is Irish on St. Patrick's Day, but to experience the authentic Ireland all year-round, you need to visit Dublin. The Irish capital, home to James Joyce, George Bernard Shaw and U2's Bono, began more than 1,000 years ago as a Viking village. Today, it is a diverse city in the heart of a metropolitan area of more than 1 million people. Here are five places not to miss on a visit to the Emerald Isle's largest city: 1 Dublin Castle : Here on a ridge at the junction of the River Liffey and its tributary Poddle, Dublin was born.

2007 Quivira Sauvignon Blanc, Fig Tree Vineyard From : Dry Creek Valley, Calif. Price: $18 Serve with : Shellfish Quivira's Fig Tree Vineyard certainly delivers the fig flavor in this smooth, complex sauvignon blanc with touches of herbs, limes, pear and apple. It's a crisp, clean wine with a touch of yeast but no oak influence.

Marlene Wheeler of Baltimore was looking for a recipe for a fresh peach cake. She remembers with great fondness one that was made by Gerstung's bakery in East Baltimore. Connie Devine of Bel Air sent in a recipe for a Baltimore Peach Cake that she clipped from the News American newspaper in the summer of 1967. Now is the ideal time to make this simple yeast cake while the local peaches are at their most flavorful. Recipe requests * Linda Everett of Knoxville, Tenn., is looking for a recipe she has misplaced for a cottage-cheese poundcake that appeared in a women's magazine in the early '80s.

Late this summer, one of the top food books on Amazon.com dangled an enticing promise: Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. The book's popularity is testament to how people love fresh bread but loathe the idea of losing a day to bake it. Bread intimidates. The time commitment is a huge part of that, but people also fear the mess or think they'll need an expensive mixer or an advanced yeast degree. And yet, they're drawn to it because, ironically, home-baked bread represents, like almost nothing else, the essence of simple living.

I've found the best way to get in a great mood for the weekend proper is to start out at my Sun colleague Chris Kaltenbach's annual 3-D presentation (11 a.m., Charles Theatre 1). This year, you can savor tremendous dimensional depictions of Rita Hayworth's pulchritude in Miss Sadie Thompson (1953), the third big-screen version of W. Somerset Maugham's story "Miss Thompson" (fourth if you count Dirty Gertie From Harlem). The movie is even more campy fun if you realize that it changes Sadie (Hayworth)

Researchers in Rockville have come a step closer to creating artificial life in a test tube by stringing together the longest strand yet of man-made DNA. Scientists at the J. Craig Venter Institute published an online paper yesterday describing how they lined up synthetic genes that replicated a large chunk of DNA from a simple form of bacteria. They put the DNA into yeast, where its segments joined together as it harnessed some of the yeast's cellular machinery. Experts say the result - 582,970 units or base pairs of intact DNA of Mycoplasma genitalium - is a milestone in synthetic biology, an emerging discipline focused on manipulating DNA like computer code.

LOS ANGELES -- Researchers at the University of Southern California have extended the life span of bakers' yeast tenfold through a combination of genetic manipulation and caloric restriction, marking the greatest increase in prolonging life ever achieved in the laboratory. Their report was published this week in the Journal of Cell Biology and PLoS Genetics. The team is now studying a human population with similar genetic mutations to determine whether they have a lower incidence of disease and whether they, too, live longer than normal.

Anyone can write a poem that nobody can understand, but poetry is a means of communication, and this column specializes in poems that communicate. What comes more naturally to us than to instruct someone in how to do something? Here the Minnesota poet and essayist Bill Holm, who is of Icelandic parentage, shows us how to make something delicious to eat. -Ted Kooser "Bread Soup: An Old Icelandic Recipe" Start with the square heavy loaf steamed a whole day in a hot spring until the coarse rye, sugar, yeast grow dense as a black hole of bread.

The resulting brew is called wheat beer. Its most popular styles are known as hefeweizen, weissbier and witbier, names that refer to its yeasty nature and its pale, almost-white hue. The main attraction of wheat beer, whatever its style, is that it is a quencher. During the hot, nasty days of summer when other beers seem as heavy as July humidity, the effervescent tang of wheat beers can be as welcome as a cool front. Wheat beer is also fun to pour. A drawback is that some flavors and aromas - we are talking banana, cloves, bubble gum and lemon - are not part of your average brewski.