Is this bread salty to you? The effects of salt and sugar concentration on Baker’s Yeast

Abstract

Fermentation is a process that allows organisms to produce energy without cellular respiration. For our experiment, we are testing Baker’s yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) in high sugar and high salt environments to see what affect they have on the yeast’s fermentation process. We did this by measuring the Ethanol and CO2 production from the yeast using CO2 and Ethanol probes. We hypothesize that the yeast will grow more in the high sugar environment because the increased sugar content will speed up the fermentation process in the yeast producing more ethanol and CO2.