Kays Translations
Just another Isekai Lover~
Chapter 13: Staple-Food Reform
Six months had passed since Tauro regained the memories of his previous life.
Those memories had returned only as knowledge. Tauro was still no more than a precocious eight-year-old with far more information in his head than experience.
Even so, there was no denying how valuable that knowledge could be.
Like the protagonists of so many otherworld fantasies, he might be able to use modern knowledge to become unrivaled.
After making a few inquiries, however, he learned that such knowledge was a double-edged sword.
According to one story, an intelligent vagrant had taken an idea to the Commercial Guild in hopes of making money from it.
He had tried to obtain a patent.
In this world, profitable ideas could be registered with the Commercial Guild, protecting their creators from plagiarism.
But that system had been established by nations, nobles, and merchants for their own benefit.
The vagrant’s idea was registered under the name of a certain nobleman. The following day, the vagrant was found dead in a forest outside the city—supposedly the victim of a monster.
Tauro didn’t know whether the story was true, but the thought of the same thing happening to him sent a chill down his spine.
He, too, had once been a vagrant, and he was only eight years old. Someone powerful could do whatever they wished with him.
For a noble or wealthy merchant, erasing his existence would probably be simple.
Tauro was grateful that the first organization he had turned to was the Adventurers’ Guild.
“I planned to put my modern knowledge to use once I was settled, but I can’t afford to be careless.”
Tauro thought the matter over.
“In that case, I’ll start with something modest that will be technically difficult for anyone else to copy!”
He had already devised a trick that relied on his current greatest advantage: [Purification].
He would cultivate yeast.
Unwanted microbes had to be controlled during fermentation, and [Purification] could take care of them.
The world was extremely unsanitary to begin with.
There were no water or sewer systems. Contractors traveled from place to place collecting human waste, then dumped it somewhere outside the city—apparently without much care as to where.
Almost no one washed their hands, making the cultivation of yeast for bread a considerable challenge.
If Tauro succeeded, however, he could make soft, fluffy bread.
More importantly, he could finally eat it.
The dark rye bread common in this world was astonishingly hard, much to Tauro’s displeasure.
Everyone knew it had to be softened in soup before eating. On its own, it was practically inedible.
Tauro had loved bread in his previous life. Now that he remembered how soft bread could be, he longed to taste it again.
And so…
“I spent an entire week using [Purification] to sterilize the fruit while I cultivated the yeast!”
Tauro stood alone in one corner of the Adventurers’ Guild kitchen, brimming with excitement.
Nei peered over curiously.
“What are you going to do with those Rigo fruits soaking in sugar water?”
The fruit—and the precious sugar used with it—had apparently caught her interest.
“I’m going to make bread!”
“Bread? Not a dessert?”
“That’s right! I’ll use this to make soft white bread from wheat.”
“White bread? You mean the expensive kind rich people eat!?”
Nei had looked disappointed when she learned it wasn’t a dessert, but her eyes immediately lit up at the mention of white bread.
Slightly taken aback by her enthusiasm, Tauro continued kneading the dough.
“I’m going to make a kind of bread no one has ever eaten before.”
Once the dough had rested, he announced, “Now I’ll bake it.”
The kitchen had no bread oven, so he cooked the dough in a frying pan.
“It’s rising! And I can smell the Rigo fruit!”
Nei could barely contain her appetite.
“It didn’t turn out as fluffy as it would have in a proper oven, but it’s ready.”
Tauro sliced the bread with a knife.
Nei was already poised to eat when Leo, apparently drawn by the aroma, entered the kitchen.
“What smells so good? Hmm? Is that bread?”
Both of them had taken good care of Tauro, so he cut a portion for Leo as well.
“It’s soft, fluffy white bread. Please try some.”
Nei touched the loaf and exclaimed, “The outside is crisp, but the inside is incredibly soft!”
Leo stared in amazement. “What in the world is this!?”
They devoured their portions in moments.
“I’ve never eaten white bread this soft…”
“It tastes even better than the bread I had at a nobleman’s estate!”
Their praise was so enthusiastic that a proposal was immediately made to sell the bread at the shop operated by the Adventurers’ Guild.
Wait so the purification ability doesn’t count yeast as a contaminant? I mean it’s literally just a different micro-organism.
thanks for the chapter
The problem with isolating the yeast you want is that there are many yeasts floating in the air, and most of them don’t have the properties you want.
The difference between bread yeast and sourdough yeast is basically just this. If you try several times, you can end up culturing a relatively “good” wild yeast by chance. Then, as long as you don’t let it die, and don’t let it get badly cross-contaminated, it’ll mostly keep those properties for years. So, you can consistently make bread with a certain property and taste. But some other batch of sourdough won’t be the same. And, many sourdough cultures tend to make dough that tastes, well, sour. You can keep making new cultures until you chance upon one that’s really good, but that’s tedious. In fact, this is how bread yeast was isolated, and it didn’t happen all in one lifetime.
If you can purify(sterilize) and true-eye appraise, you can pick and choose until you get exactly the yeast you want, with much less time and effort.
continuing to lament the reality that people who know about machine tools don’t become fiction authors and authors don’t learn of machine tools
Comparable to artists who draw gunshots expelling the whole bullet, casing and all! lol