Anathem and Bread-Making

Question

Mild spoilers for Neal Stephenson's Anathem:

When Erasmas is quarantined on first arriving at the Convox, he says "They’d provided me with everything I needed to make bread". But how is this possible? Dried yeast is an industrial product that's surely not available in a concent, and even if it was available at the Convox (there were Saecular foodstuffs in his trailer), Erasmas wouldn't know how to use it. The avout would bake their bread the mediaeval way, using some of yesterday's dough as a starter for today's bread. You can't just leave it lying around in a trailer module in the same way as you can with flour and salt.

Answer 1

From Neil Stephenson's Anathem, Part 9, Imbrase:

Half the kitchen was oc­cu­pied by bot­tled water, pal­letized and stacked. The cup­boards had been stocked with an odd mix­ture of ex­tra­muros gro­ceries and fresh pro­duce from the tan­gles and ar­bore­tums of Tre­de­garh.

It's not specifically addressed, but if there was fresh produce, there's no reason there couldn't be some starter dough.

Answer 2

It doesn't seem like he spends enough time to make a yeast bread....They tend to have a long proofing/rising cycle.

That being said, there is no reason that they would be restricted to "mediaeval" bread making: remember, despite their monastic lives, they're anything but uneducated, and the process of making "dried yeast" is actually quite simple. Generally you just use a potato or grain mash as as growth media, and when it's all nicely yeasted out, you spread it flat and dry it. Crumble it up, and voila, dry yeast.