Budding Bakers

Sometimes there is a piece of bread provided with school lunch. The bread in a school lunch is a combination of yeast, wheat flour, and other ingredients. Did you know that there was once a living organism in that roll? Yeast is a type of fungus that makes dough rise or increase in size to become soft.

The drawing below shows dry yeast from a container.

Yeast cells have organelles like those found in humans. The table below shows how yeast appears under a microscope and describes how it appears at two magnifications.

Yeast uses cellular respiration for energy. Yeast cells are able to get the materials they need through their semi-permeable membranes. Depending on the size of the molecule, some molecules may pass through freely while others may not.