What is fermentation?

Fermentation is when tiny living things change food or drinks to make them taste different, like turning milk into yogurt or grapes into wine.

Imagine you have a jar full of juice and some special helpers, like little chefs who live inside the juice. These helpers are called yeast, and they love to work hard. They take the sugar in the juice and turn it into something else: alcohol and carbon dioxide, which is the same gas we breathe out.

Think of baking bread. When you mix flour, water, and a little yeast, those tiny chefs start working. They eat the sugars in the dough and produce gas bubbles, that’s why your bread gets fluffy and rises up!

Or think about making sourdough. The same kind of helpers are at work there too, but they take longer to do their job.

So fermentation is just like a little party inside food or drinks, where tiny chefs change things so we get new flavors, no magic needed!