If you're preparing to make bread or any other baked good requiring yeast, such as the classic Parker House rolls recipe, there's an important step you may not realize you need to do: test your yeast.

In those cases, my dad would add a bunch of extra yeast and hope for the best. Do you do this as well? To learn more about how to test yeast that may be past its usefulness, I spoke to an expert.

And if they suspect that something else might be in play, they can send that swab out for a culture test, too. This typically checks for a bunch of heavy hitters at once, Dr. Ross says, including, yes ...

These tests include wet mount microscopy, a simple test to detect yeast under a microscope; culture tests, which identify the specific strain of candida; and skin scraping, which examines the ...