Dried Yeast vs Fresh Yeast

[muddy4x4]

for the last couple of years I have used dried yeast for my pizzas with good consistent results. a couple of weeks ago I discovered my local Sainsburys bakery sells fresh yeast.

Used our standard pizza dough recipe, but substituted dry for fresh yeast, increasing the quantity by x3.

The first batch was fantastic.

We kept the remainder of the fresh yeast for 5 days in the fridge, and used it for another batch. It was good, but not as good as the first batch, so from now on we will only buy fresh for the next day !

[h12rpo]

It freezes well with no loss of ooomph


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[muddy4x4]

Will buy a bit extra next time and freeze some. keeping it in the fridge, it seemed to loose much of its potency.

Thanks for that !

[albacore]

"Used our standard pizza dough recipe, but substituted dry for fresh yeast, increasing the quantity by x3.

The first batch was fantastic."

If this is a repeatable improvement, it has pretty serious implications for anyone making yeasted pizza or bread doughs!

[tonyb]

All other things being equal (ie temp and time), some of the (live) yeast cells in fresh yeast will become inactive or die over time, this shouldn't affect the ability of the remaining (live) yeast from being able to successfully raise a dough, you might consider: using more fresh yeast, proving for longer, proving at a higher temp, or making a starter.

[kstronach]

sells? or gives you? i didn't think supermarkets were allowed to sell yeast something to do with it being a live organism? its free at my asda and tesco anyway!

[muddy4x4]

60p per 200g at our local Sainsburys.

Had a few folks around last night, made two batches of dough, each using 1.5kg of flour and fresh yeast. Both batches rose really well and we had a lovely dough.

Next time I will ferment the Yeast in the water for a hour or so before to if this makes much difference.

next firing of the oven will be in a couple of weeks, weather permitting

[matthewcove]

I find that dried or fresh yeast makes very little difference. Also fermenting in water first will only make it more active when you use it. Pre-fermenting a proportion of your flour first for a few hours will make a much bigger difference, allow you to use a much small amount of yeast and improve flavour. I always make a pre-ferment and then use that to make my dough.

Matthew

[xavster]

Would you mind giving a bit more explanation of how you pre-ferment a portion of the flour? I'm keen to give this a try.
My normal problem is that the dough over-rises and becomes very wet unless I keep it in the fridge. Even then I don't think I could ferment it for 48hours as some people recommend.

[tonyb]

Preferment usually means creating a mix of flour and water plus yeast (or sourdough starter). As in pretty much most of bread making there are no hard and fast rules, though the preferment is usually looser ie higher ratio of water to flour, often 50:50, often with a much lower addition of yeast 25% or 50% as much and no salt/sugar, but as I say no right/wrong methods or %s. You can make the preferment with say 25% of the final flour weight, a day or two before you need it and keep in the fridge, then add the rest of the flour/water/salt to give the finished dough as normal, not forgetting to adjust the quantities based on the normal recipe you use ie if you normal make a 60% dough using 1kg flour and 600g water, make up a 100% preferment with 250g flour and 250g water, mix and put in the fridge, when you are ready to make the final dough, mix the preferment with the remaining 750g flour, 350g of water and whatever % salt you use. You will need to experiment with proportion of preferment and different lead times depending on temp of your fridge.

I use a sourdough starter which needs a similar process because the yeast is much less active than commercial baker's yeast. I can keep my final dough in the fridge for 4 days without any problems and this does create a lovely tasting cooked base.