Buying fresh yeast

[Franci]

I know some supermarkets carry fresh compressed yeast... I was thinking of buying 1 pound at a time so that I could portion it an keep in the freezer. I found an online seller in California. Any other source on line on the East Coast?

I normally use the instant from Red saf but I miss using the fresh version.

[cdh]

Does baking yeast survive the freezer?  Brewing yeasts generally don't, unless you add glycerine to the sample... otherwise the cells burst when they freeze.

[Franci]

I did in the past but not for long...good question, I should ask around freezing for longer times.

[Franci]

I asked around to people that use the fresh yeast on regular basis and it seems if well wrap to keep long time in the freezer.

[lindag]

I haven't seen compressed yeast in stores near me for many, many years.

My mother used to use it in her homemade breads back in the fifties and I swear that it gave the bread a heavenly, yeasty aroma that you don't get with the dried yeasts of today.  I'd love to be able to try it for myself to see if it is true.

[paulraphael]

2 hours ago, lindag said:

I haven't seen compressed yeast in stores near me for many, many years.

My mother used to use it in her homemade breads back in the fifties and I swear that it gave the bread a heavenly, yeasty aroma that you don't get with the dried yeasts of today.  I'd love to be able to try it for myself to see if it is true.

 

Fresh cake yeast is exactly the same organism that's in active dry and instant yeast. What's different is that in fresh yeast, a very high proportion of the organisms are dead. So to compensate, you use the yeast in a much higher proportion in any given recipe. The dead yeast don't contribute to leavening, but they taste like yeast ... hence the yeasty flavor and aroma.

 

Most artisan bread bakers consider yeast flavor a defect, so this isn't something you often see them striving for . If you do want yeast flavor in bread, a more predictable approach would be to use instant yeast (which is just yeast that's been dried in a way that keeps virtually all the organisms alive) for leavening, and that add brewer's yeast (inactive) for flavor.

Edited May 3, 2016 by paulraphael (log)

[Franci]

That's funny Paulraphael, I admit I didn't research into it properly but I heard about this death cell theory on Italian forum about dry yeast and fresh yeast and everybody thinks fresh is superior. But I'm guessing a lot are talking about active dry instead of instant.

 

I should remind myself that nothing is too difficult if you look in the right place. I found it in a neighborhood bakery for $ 2 dollars, it's a pound 

 

[Lisa Shock]

I would be wary of freezing it. Instead, I would try to find friends and neighbors to share it with. -If it's that cheap, and readily available all the time. I belong to a FaceBook group of home gardeners who trade with each other for all sorts of things, not all of them from the garden.

[Franci]

LIsa, honestly I didn't think I could buy so cheaply from the bakery. I guess is much fresher than the odd one you can find sometimes from grocery stores. I'll wrap well and will last until it will last in the fridge!

 

[JoNorvelleWalker]

@Franci if you like the taste and results from Fleischmann's have you considered their instant yeast?  One time I tried SAF but I went back to Fleischmann's.  I buy it by the pound and it keeps nicely in the freezer.  Essentially forever.

 

I can't understand why a baker would want any other form of yeast than instant.*  Though the different strains of yeast from different manufacturers undoubtedly have subtle differences.  Could I tell in a blind tasting?  Not sure, probably not.

 

I'd be interested to know if Italy has a favored yeast purveyor other than SAF or Fleischmann's.  They are the only two brands with which I have experience.

 

 

*I'm not considering sourdough organisms here.

 

 

 

 

Edit:  I agree with @paulraphael (and Professor Calvel) that yeast taste is a defect.  When I make my batch of poolish I use less than an eighth teaspoon of instant yeast.  Sometimes I even bother to weigh it out.

 

Edited May 4, 2016 by JoNorvelleWalker
after thought (log)

[Franci]

Jo, I found this table. The one I grew up with was lievital.

 

Times have changed. While in the past the use of fresh yeast was massive, now given the wider information available home bakers (also in Italy), when they are not wild yeast aficionado, use less and less yeast preferring a longer refrigerated rise. 

For a 24 hour fermentation of pizza (500-600 g flour at 20 C) I would use less than 3 g of fresh yeast, so 1 g of instant

[paulraphael]

When I call yeast flavor a defect, I don't mean to do so authoritatively. One person's bug is another's feature. That just seems to be the convention in most of the writing I see on artisan bread. 

 

If you do like the flavor /aroma of yeast, my suggestion of getting it through brewer's yeast is for the purpose of getting more predictable and consistent results. I haven't tried this, but am imagining it would work.

 

I agree with Jo that instant is superior, at least to 'active dry' yeast in every way. I'm not sure why active dry is still sold. It's the same yeast organism as instant, but with no way of knowing how much of it is dead or alive. Maybe it's for people who like surprises.

 

As Franci says, in Italy they traditionally use the yeast very low quantities, and grow it through long fermentation times. Because of this, you're not going to be loading the bread with dead yeast, so you wouldn't expect to taste it. I believe the Italians prefer cake yeast the reason they prefer many things: unquestioning devotion to tradition. Bakers didn't start using cultivated yeast until around 150 years ago (they got it from brewers; it's the same basic strain we buy today). But that's about the age of the Kingdom of Italy.

[lindag]

Here's more information about the differences in yeast and exp. compressed yeast, most interesting!

Yeasts

[paulraphael]

52 minutes ago, lindag said:

Here's more information about the differences in yeast and exp. compressed yeast, most interesting!

Yeasts

 

I think they're mostly repeating lore when it comes to flavor. It's the exact same strain of saccharomyces cerevisiae regardless of what form it's in. I can imagine a flavor difference if you used a huge amount of cake yeast, and did a very short proof. But that would really just be about adding the flavor of lots of dead yeast organisms.