Vienna Bread - History

History

In the 19th century, for the first time, bread was made only from beer yeast and new dough (no old dough). The first noted or applauded example of this was the sweet-fermented Imperial "Kaiser-Semmel" roll of the Vienna bakery at the Paris Exposition of 1867. These sweet-fermented rolls lacked the acid sourness typical of lactobacillus, and were said to be popular and in high demand.

Prior to this time, bakers had been using old-dough leavens, and they had discovered that accelerating the latter refreshments' rest intervals promoted yeast growth in a race against time and what would later be learned were overwhelming lactobacillus numbers. At some point bakers began to add brewer's or beer yeast or barm to the latter refreshments, and liked the results.

A shortage of beer yeast developed when beer brewers slowly switched from top-fermenting to bottom-fermenting yeast (both S. cerevisiae), creating a shortage of yeast for making sweet-fermented breads, so the Vienna Process was developed by 1846.

In 1845 the Association of Vienna Bakers announced a contest for the production of a sweet-fermenting yeast, this prize was awarded in 1850 to Adolph Ignaz Mautner (see biography).

In 1867 the Paris Exposition was said to recognize the Vienna Bakery as, "First in the world."

The Vienna bakery of the exposition year made three kinds of bread: the sweet-fermented Imperial rolls; wheat and rye as well as rye-only loaves; and a large variety of fancy breads and sweet cakes. The Imperial rolls were made with the finer grades of flour, milk and water in a 50:50 ratio, beer yeast, and salt. Other breads made with the same grades of flour claimed to include: Tea cakes which added butter and may have excluded water in favor of milk; Gipfel or Pinnacle cake which used milk (no water) and lard; and Brioche, made with milk and sugar.