Baking with yeast is new to me. I don’t like depending on another organism to do my work in the kitchen. Yeast doesn’t play by the normal rules of quick breads. There is a biological element I need to wait for. Baking powder is governed by the Arrhenius equation. If something is 10º warmer, the reaction doubles in speed. Not with yeast, 10º means death if the temperature goes much above 115º. If this rule held for organisms, we could speed our children to puberty by putting them in a sauna.

I also don’t like the fact that the expiration date on the package represents the date on which the ingredient, well, expires. I am an actuary and need no additional reminders of morbidity. The milk was microwaved to 112º, I added a teaspoon of sugar to the milk, and then added yeast. I waited 15 minutes for froth and saw nothing. Rather than thinking I had dumped a packet of dead yeast into milk I prefer to think there’s a yeast union. At 5:20pm, Yeast Local 219 was simply on an mandated break.