"Explain it to me again," Flaminia says.

Apparently, she used to be the big shot in Amorium when it came down to baking. She's extremely high-level, she says. But guess what? There's a decent amount of chemistry involved in baking.

The very strain you use as yeast makes a big difference in the kind of bread you will get. Anyway, let me explain it better.

"Yeast is the thing that ferments stuff. You people know what fermenting is, so that's something. Now, it's not skills that ferment stuff. Nor does it happen casually. There are small things, invisible to the naked eye, that-”

"What does 'naked eye' mean?" Flaminia is taking notes in a little notebook, but she doesn't always follow all my expressions. That's why I asked her to interrupt me if there was anything she didn't understand.

"Not visible to the naked eye means something you can’t see without lenses. See, you can use glass lenses to magnify how you see stuff. If you use enough glass lenses, you can see the things that make the bread rise. I don't think I can build it, but maybe some... [Alchemist] could."

I'm still getting used to the whole square bracket thing, but it is what it is.

"Anyway, these invisible yeast particles have different properties. Some of them consume sugar to make alcohol, and others consume sugar to make air. As a rule of thumb, beer yeast is not the best for baking. Even though we might have gotten ourselves the right strain to make bread, the bread made with this kind of yeast will become hard quite fast."

"The Watch often complains how our bread doesn't keep for that long," Flaminia nods. "I have skills for it, but it doesn't stay soft for longer than a day or two."

And that is fascinating.

It probably means there's no specialized growth of yeast because of the skill. Or, even worse, it's just making CO2 magically appear inside the bread.

"Do we have any large glass containers?" I ask.

"No, why?"

"I'll explain later. Do we have small ones?"

Flaminia nods.

"Yes, but be careful with them. Glass is expensive."

Right.

"Well, we could keep using the wooden barrels for the beer yeast. It's not hard to keep it going. However, if the Watch is complaining about the bread not keeping..."

I scratch the stubby beard that has grown overnight on my face, thinking about the best solution for this.

See, if the beer yeast works, we can just feed it and let it reproduce en masse. It's not that hard, nor is it as sensitive as what people know as 'sourdough.'

"Ok, get someone to drain the liquid from the barrels, get me some honey, all the types of flour you use here... Let's see, what else... oh, the glass containers. Bring them to me. All of them."

Flaminia starts ordering people around, relaying my commands to the other employees. Some of the women give me the stink-eye for the sudden additional work that has been sprung upon them. Well, ladies, we do need some help here.

I start sampling all the different types of flour they have until I smell exactly what I’ve been looking for.

I could have spotted it earlier if this had been Earth. Without excessive refinement, barely any flour looks straight-up white. You get brown, reddish, brownish... but then, there’s what I was looking for.

I slowly put my hand through the flour in front of me and bring it to my nose, inhaling the thick smell.

This yellowish flour has a much stronger smell than any other I have just sampled.

Now, why am I so interested in this?

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

Let's go step by step.

Beer yeast is good... enough. It's not perfect. Plus, working with wheat flour is cool... but do you know what's cooler?

Hehe.

I'll tell you in a second.

First things first.

"What are you going to use the glass for?" Flaminia asks as three women deposit a bunch of glass containers all over the place.

"Put three tables together, and I'll explain. One sec."

"Chef, the barrels have been emptied, and we didn't throw away the gunk at the bottom," Violante, the bootylicious Elf, says to Flaminia.

"Good. Joey, what now?"

I find myself staring at the two beautiful women and smiling widely. God, back on Earth, I should have never hired men in the first place, I swear. This is what a good working environment is supposed to look like.

"We'll need to separate the yeast more carefully in a second moment, but you can probably get an [Alchemist] to do that. I'll need to explain to Clodia how it works. Just mix some of it with flour, water, and a pinch of sugar."

"What's the honey for, then?"

"Flam, dear. Just be patient," I smile like the Cheshire Cat. "Just mix the things together, use one sample from each barrel per mix, then we'll check on it in a couple hours. We’ll select the one that has risen the most, and we'll cultivate that yeast. I'm not a huge expert on it, but we can trial-and-error until we figure it out."

"Now, the honey," I smile. "And another surprise."

"We are going to create a different type of yeast. How do you call this type of flour?" I say, pointing at the yellowish one.

"Hard flour? That's the one that comes from the hardest wheat, isn't it? Not the best for baking," Flaminia shakes her head. "They always end up making some. Sometimes we mix it with normal flour, but in most cases, you can feel it in your mouth even after it's cooked."

Oh, you sweet summer child...

"This is what you think. Can you get me a mortar and a pestle?"

As Violante comes back with what I asked, I pour the 'hard flour' into it.

"I'm not going to rock the boat too much, but this will be the first recipe Clodia will be paying for. Through the nose, as well," I smile widely. "Yeast? Easy. Now, we'll need to carefully select the grains, talk to the farmers, and all that. But I'm going to show you the best possible kind of bread we can make. Also, the Watch is absolutely going to love this."

I start grinding the hard flour. Or, as the Italians call this variation, 'rimacinato di semola.' That means 're-milled semolina.'

Let me explain.

There are many types of flour. Depending on the type of grain, you have semolina, which is durum, meaning hard, wheat flour, and normal wheat flour, which you know as 'flour.' Both products are derived from processed wheat— nothing too weird, trust me.

The grinding process is called 'milling.' Based on the type of wheat, the milling produces different grain sizes. The granularity makes some wheat better for standard baking. Usually, you wouldn't use semolina because the grains are too big. However... guess what? You can simply mill it again. You crush it to a very fine powder, either by hand or with some machinery, and you’ve got yourself a different type of flour.

A recap for you.

The difference between semolina and flour is immediately perceptible both to the eye and to the touch; in fact, the main characteristics of durum wheat flour are its yellow color and the large grains that make it more granular than wheat flour, which has smaller grains.

Get it?

Now, your average American housewife would call what I'm going to do here 'semolina sourdough.' But since I'm a proper baker, this is simply a durum-based mother yeast.

Want to hear something funny?

Some people in San Francisco genuinely believe that that's where sourdough was invented. Yeah, imagine that, right? So weird— San Francisco is full of smug idiots? Big news.

Anyway.

Mother yeasts are not practical for massive volumes of bread-making because they take longer to make the bread rise.

However, there is a very special variant that I'll be working toward getting, starting today. Look, it's going to take days before this is anywhere near ready. But if I pull this off... well, I hope no actual Southern Italian comes to Epretos in the future because I could get beaten up by claiming that what I'm going to do is actually the proper thing...

Anyway, this re-milled semolina has a higher protein content compared to normal flour. However, since the grains of semolina are more coarse even after you grind them as finely as dust, it's harder to build up gluten.

Uhhh, gluten. You might hear some stupid ghost sounds at the word 'gluten.’

Now, no matter what the soccer moms say about their 'intolerant' children, gluten is what holds bread together. Literally. The net that holds the inside of bread and forms alveoli is gluten.

What should we do about celiac people? Should we adopt the Spartan way and dunk'em off cliffs? Well, what is life without pizza, right? If a little infanticide could save them from never being able to taste proper focaccia...

Anyway, gluten.

While we are getting yeast here, I'll still have to explain what gluten is to Flaminia and the others. Gluten nets trap gas bubbles during fermentation, and it creates a unique bread texture.

Without gluten, bread would crumble like a cookie.

To get gluten, you need to mix flour with water. Different flours have different gluten potentials. In the case of semolina, this potential is actually low.

Also, good luck with getting a good gluten formation without a machine... or skills, I suppose.

When checking if the dough has been hydrated enough and the gluten is ready to be shaped, you should be able to stretch it so thin that it becomes translucent. This will get you an even loaf of bread.

Now, why have I been talking about all of this?

"Flaminia, get me Clodia. I'll show you the recipe for a special type of bread. Where I come from, it has existed for two thousand years."

"Really?" She looks at me, interested. "Do you think Clodia will pay just for a different type of bread?"

"Oh, yeah. She will. At least, she will for this. We'll be making Altamura bread."