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Nutritional Yeast
Appears in
By Ole Mouritsen and Klavs Styrbæk
Published 2014
Another source of umami from yeast is known as nutritional yeast, made up of flakes of dried, inactive yeast. It is produced from ordinary baker’s yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) that is cultivated on a substrate of molasses from sugarcane or sugar beets. The yeast, along with its enzymes, is deactivated—that is to say, killed—by warming it, followed by washing and drying. The finished product is in the form of a yellowish powder or small flakes.
Nutritional yeast is quite distinct from yeast extract, which is much darker and has a much stronger taste. While nutritional yeast is also a source of glutamate, the total amount is less than that of yeast extract, but it has an abundance of vitamin B and of all the important amino acids.