There’s a reason the ingredient is still missing from stores.
Bread making is enjoying a pandemic-driven renaissance right now, but it’s hitting one hitch: No one can find any yeast.
Shortages of dry yeast have been a consistent complaint since business shutdowns and stay-at-home orders have kept most Americans eating in—and hoarding many dry and canned goods to prepare. While some supply chains have begun to catch up with demand surges for certain products, yeast has been one area where they’re struggling to keep up. Robb MacKie, president and CEO of the American Bakers Association, said the industry was unprepared for the run on yeast because there’s usually a lull in demand for bread products and ingredients in the first quarter of the year, while the peak typically comes during the November and December holidays. The pandemic has flipped that schedule on its head, he said, with demand surpassing what producers would expect even in the busy season.As with toilet paper and hand sanitizer and pasta, it’s tough for the dry yeast supply chain to accommodate an astronomical surge in demand. John Heilman, vice president of manufacturing for Fleischmann’s Yeast producer AB Mauri, roughly estimates that it’ll take a month or two until shoppers will see a consistent supply of dry yeast on shelves. “I’ve been with the company for five years, and this is by far the highest demand I’ve ever seen,” he said, noting that there’s been as much as a 600 percent increase year over year. In the past there have been demand spikes during large snowstorms, but those don’t even come close to what Heilman is seeing now. (He also said that demand for fresh yeast, which the company also produces, has been softening during the pandemic, because so many restaurants have either limited their offerings for takeout or have closed down altogether.)Yeast are single-celled fungi that come in 1,500 different species; humans have been cultivating them to make breads and alcoholic beverages for 5,000 years. Nowadays, as Quartz outlines, industrial-scale production for retail involves mixing molasses with yeast strains that have been bred to select for traits that are optimal for baking. The yeast is then placed in a series of fermenters where it’s fed oxygen and sugar, allowing it to reproduce. The resulting product goes into a centrifuge to separate out the solids, which can then be aerated, filtered, dried, and packaged.But the supply chain issues may not have anything to do with these ingredients. Instead, a major problem seems to be getting all that yeast packaged.Heilman, who oversees three Fleischmann’s Yeast plants in the U.S., has been trying to ramp up production by staffing facilities to max capacity and asking workers to hold off on vacations. “From a molasses standpoint and growing the yeast itself, there’s plenty of capacity,” he said. “Where we wound up maxed out is our ability to package."....
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Meanwhile at Martha Stewart.com:
We last dropped in on Martha when she offered as a sweepstakes prize a weekend with her to visit the Svalbard seed vault.
And in 2015:
..Me, I'm going to go think about a leaping and bounding Martha Stewart: Martha Stewart Jumps on Takeover Speculation
And then there was the time in 2013 "Martha Stewart Would Kill Donald Trump, Marry Michael Bloomberg"
And on yeast? May I direct puzzled and/or exasperated reader's attention to the 'search blog' box, top left.
