Extra rises allow the dough to ferment longer, as the other poster
mentioned.

By folding or punching down the dough, you move around the yeast and flour
so that the yeast cells can come into contact with more food.

In effect, you're allow more time for the yeast to flavor the dough without
starving the yeast cells to death.

Most modern recipes have only one ferment rise, and one proofing (after
shaping) rise.

Cake yeast is compressed, fresh yeast and it's the best thing to use if you
can find it. Many people can't, so substitute as follows:

1 .6 oz Cake of fresh yeast = 2 tsp of "Instant" yeast (SAF Instant,
Fleischmann's "Rapid Rise", others)
1 .6 oz Cake of fresh yeast = 2 1/2 tsp of Active Dry yeast.

With the active dry, make sure that the yeast gets wet before being mixed
into the dough, unless the dough is very wet anyway.

Paul

"Knox Graham" > wrote in message
...
> Hello,
> I recently came across my Grandmother's bread recipe. In addition to being
> VERY labor intensive, it calls for letting the dough rise three times.
>
> I'm wondering what the benefits would be to the three-rise method as
opposed
> to the two-rise which I am using.
>
> It also calls for cake yeast, which I assume is all that was available at
> the time.
>
> If anyone wants the full recipe, I'll send it.
>
> All opinions/advice appreciated!
>
> Knox G.
>
>
>