Exploring Yeast: Making Cinnamon Rolls!🍞🍂
- STEM Herizons
- Aug 11, 2025
- 2 min read
If you want fluffy and mouthwatering bread or cinnamon rolls, the most important part is using yeast and letting it rise! But why do we need it and what exactly happens when we let our dough rise? In today's lesson, we're going to explore all the fascinating things that take place when you bake! 👩‍🍳👩‍🔬
To start off, yeast is actually a single-celled fungus, meaning it was once alive! 🤯
Rising is when we let the dough sit, usually in a warm area, so it can expand
When we make cinnamon rolls, we use these processes in three steps
The first time you use yeast is when you activate it. This is when you mix it with some warm water and sugar, wait for ten minutes, and it becomes foamy, so you can make sure that the yeast works. The yeast becomes foamy because it releases carbon dioxide (CO2) when the yeast "eats" the sugar, and warm water speeds up this reaction. This process is known as fermentation. The carbon dioxide gets trapped in the liquid, and that's why you see small bubbles on the top.
The second time you use yeast is during the leavening process. After adding your flour, you let the dough rise for about an hour. Because we already added yeast, when we leaven it, more CO2 will form in air pockets within the dough. After a while, it doubles in size because there is so much carbon dioxide! This step also makes it super fun to poke out the air bubbles when you knead the dough!
After you shape your dough into rolls, you let the dough rise one more time, this is known as proofing. This makes sure that you get the fluffiest cinnamon rolls because it releases more carbon dioxide to the dough, so you get a nice airy texture! After that, you can finally bake them and enjoy your baked goods!
For this "experiment," we encourage you to try making cinnamon rolls on your own and observing all the scientific processes when you use yeast! I recommend this recipe from Tasty!
Thanks for stopping by and have fun exploring! 💖👩‍🔬
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