How long does yeast live after baking?

18 Oct.,2022

 

Brewer's Yeast Powder

feed additive yeast

The most realistic answer, including many correct comments above, is 99.9999..% dead.

Yeast and bacteria can sporulate, and spores can survive very harsh conditions. A spore is basically a solid: a cell which has been dried out, packed with sugars and wrapped in an extra thick cell wall. They are not metabolically active, so they can stay that way for thousands of years. And they can survive boiling temperatures for a little while too, that's why temperatures above boiling are needed for sterilization.

So if any of the yeast in your dough (or bacteria that are in there too) decided to sporulate before the bake, your could find them alive later. But they would not be active just after the bread is baked, the temperature at which they can grow is, as others have mentioned, quite a bit lower than boiling.

I don't know whether baker's yeast actually sporulates much, but it is said that brewers yeast are very unlikely to make spores. Maybe they've had it too easy at the brewery. But I'm pretty confident that after you've baked your bread, there will be more active yeast and bacteria falling onto the outside than there are live yeast on the inside.

BTW - if you used dried yeast from a package, they are not spores, they are actually made be freeze drying live yeast, which is why its so important to rehydrate them with water, as written on the package.