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I fed my 2 year old pancakes that required yeast: yeast, mashed banana, warm water, whole wheat and buckwheat flour, and salt. I left the batch in the fridge overnight, and in the morning added a teaspoon of sugar, some more water, and a bit of oil. Fried them up on a shallow pan for just a few minutes and served.

My concern? How much alcohol/ethanol would yeast pancakes contain? Should I be worried about having fed these to a two year old???? I feel ridiculous in all sorts of ways...

curiousv
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  • Yeast fermentation makes alcohol, but it takes time. (about 2 weeks for beer, which is liquid bread). The small amount of alcohol in bread will mostly evaporate during cooking--This is why baguettes don't make us drunk. Is there a reason behind your concern that you think your pancakes had a significant amount of alcohol in them? If so, you'll probably need to provide recipe & method details for folks to make a guess to how much alcohol might be generated. – AMtwo Mar 11 '21 at 14:58
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    I don't have time to write an answer now, but my [answer to a related question](https://cooking.stackexchange.com/a/112740/20413) (about residual alcohol in vinegar) has some links that go into how much alcohol there is in various foods (including some baked goods) and how much is produced in our own digestive systems, along with some hints as to why we shouldn't worry about trace quantities – Chris H Mar 11 '21 at 15:37
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    Does this answer your question? [Is there residual alcohol in various vinegars?](https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/112713/is-there-residual-alcohol-in-various-vinegars) – GdD Mar 11 '21 at 15:54
  • The fact that there are what appear to be substantial risk amounts of ethanol content in baked goods makes me a little worried, especially since that study looked at children. My 2 year old eats baked goods often, as I assume most toddlers do. I make my own pizza dough, which also contains yeast and rises on the counter for several hours. I’m assuming that would also contain alcohol and the baking of it at 350 degrees if even for close to an hour, would not remove it all. The question is, how much is left. And does it even matter, since it’s being fed to a small child? – curiousv Mar 11 '21 at 16:30
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    That such as gripe water used to contain alcohol intentionally & the favourite grandparents' trick to shut the bairn up when they've had enough was to dip the dummy in scotch, i think concerns are over-emphasised these days. Ostensibly the reason they removed it from gripe water wasn't that it was harmful, merely that it didn't put the kid to sleep, so basically "didn't work" as intended & was cheaper to leave it out. – Tetsujin Mar 11 '21 at 16:35
  • There is a lot of information on the internet. I feel like most of it is just scary. Like everything is bad for you and should be avoided. That pretty much leaves us with air, and even that has VOCs and other pollutants we breathe in! ‍♀️ – curiousv Mar 11 '21 at 16:51
  • Talk to your Medical Doctor/Paediatrician, he/she will in better position to help you in regards to your kid health and reassure you. – Max Mar 11 '21 at 18:06
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    I commented this on the other question's answer, but, for @curiousv - Perhaps worth noting, that study was funded by an herbal medicine company and seems to have served the purpose of arguing against regulations on alcohol in herbal medicines by suggesting there's more alcohol in regular food. It also tended to take the high limits (95th percentile etc.) for consumption of everything... Not to say it's necessarily wrong per se, just that it's certainly written from a certain point of view. – Joe M Mar 11 '21 at 18:51
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    @JoeM - that's a bit like the now famous "butter is bad for you, marg is good" research that fooled the world for possibly 2 decades… until someone realised the paper was sponsored by the margarine marketing board… setting in motion a whole re-think on how to analyse data. – Tetsujin Mar 11 '21 at 18:58
  • @Tetsujin Indeed... always read the paper to the very end for the acknowledgement of CoIs and funding :) – Joe M Mar 11 '21 at 18:59

1 Answers1

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Yes, yeast-risen foods such as bread will contain trace quantities of ethanol. The concentration will likely be lower than that found in fresh fruit.

Sneftel
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