I don't understand how the concept of yeast can have eluded folks in modern times. There are references to it all throughout the Bible. It's not a modern discovery...unless by "the old days" you are referring to ancient days. Regarding sourdough...I was talking to a retired couple who bought a camping trailer and took lots of extended trips. They brought their sourdough starter with them, since it needed to be fed. I guess they didn't trust the services of a dough sitter, huh?
I don't believed they knew about yeast. They knew bread rose (leavened) in some conditions and they probably carried sourdough of some kind with them, just as they carried fire. They didn't know how or why it worked however. Commercial yeast was available until the 19th century. https://bible.knowing-jesus.com/topics/Yeast
But lots of those versus refer to "leaven." Matthew 13:33 is where Jesus said “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three pecks of flour until it was all leavened.” There are also versus using leaven as an analogy of one's old, corrupt ways, so one's reborn state of being is at first unleavened. Going back to my friend who captures yeast out of the air, I guess I can see how it might have "just occurred" and they figured out how to keep the starter alive (which likely also "just happened," since they made bread every single day.) I read that the first intentional use of yeast in bread was done by the Egyptians around 1000B.C. and--as you said--likely started as the byproduct of beer. But even then, they may not have connected the dots, and were merely making solid beer (or their beer was liquid bread.) Fascinating stuff.
Yep, they had no way to ID it until microscopes were developed, and even then separating out the stuff they saw into functions was difficult. I think leavening took time, as anyone who has made sourdough knows, especially prior to the development of high gluten wheat. I understand that is why the Hebrews ate unleavened bread, as they wanted to get "om the road" quickly , and didn't want to wait in one place for the bread to leaven.
I just read that microscopic identification did not happen until the 1800s, and Pasteur only later got involved with it so that France could out-compete Germany in beer making.
I haven't for a long time. Hubby got me an automatic bread maker which I thought was worthless. If you are going to make bread, MAKE it. But it did make the house smell good. Kneading is good for the hands. And for cutting, I had a knife with teeth so deep you could use it as a cross cut saw. Made slicing easier if you did not put any pressure on it.
I love making breads but I also love my bread machine. If I use my favorite bread recipe and dump it into the machine, it tastes exactly the same as hand made. It's nice if I'm busy doing other stuff to just dump stuff in and have fresh bread in a few hours, plus I don't have to use the big oven. I agree about a good bread knife; I have one that goes through a loaf "like buttah."
This recipe for "same day focaccia" bread came up in my youtube recommendations. I'm going to try this one day this week. (6 min. video)
When we had our restaurant in Idaho, @Bobby Cole used to bake loaves of bread every day. He made small loaves, which we served hot at each table with a little dish of butter and a jar of jam. People loved it, and had the buffet and all of the hot bread that they wanted. The restaurant always had that “bread baking” aroma every morning, and I just loved having fresh hot bread that Bobby made. That might be the only thing that I miss about having that restaurant.
I have a Zojirushi (Zoji for short) bread maker. They're one of the few companies that make a small, one pound loaf, bread maker. I love it. No matter what kind of bread you buy, it has the texture of glue. This makes the perfect size loaf for me. I like the white the best, so that is mostly what I make. I use honey instead of sugar. I haven't been able to find rye flour in a store, so I just ordered some from King Arthur baking. Anyone make rye bread? I think it's a big German thing and I'm German and Milwaukee was a big German community in its early days.