December 6, 2023 - 2:14pm
Lievito di birra in the US
Hi guys,
I found an Italian recipe that calls for Lievito Di Birra. I read that is made of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, mainly used for beer production and gives a light bitter flavor when used in baking, the italians use it either fresh or dry. Here in the US, is almost impossible to find it at a reasonable price, but reading in other blogs I found that Fleischmann's dry active yeast is completely made of the same strain used in Lievito di birra.
Has anybody used it a substitute? Or what other type of yeast I can use to replace it?
Thank you all in advance,
JC
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Dried yeast? Literal translation is brewers yeast but when I type it into google I found this and it looks like dried yeast to me.
... lievito di birra tends to refer to fresh yeast, as opposed to lievito in polvere ("powdered yeast" or dry yeast). S.Cerevisiae is the same strain used in fresh & dried yeast here, so the quantity indicated should tell you how much to sub for whatever the Italian recipe calls for. Good luck!
Thank you all for the input!! I appreciate it
Lievito di birra, sometimes shortened to ldb simply means yeast. Lievito di birra fresco-fresh yeast. Lievito di birra secco-dry yeast
Thanks,
If a recipe just says Lievito di birra, should I assume is the fresh or dry one?
I have read there is a proportion 3 (dry): 1 (fresh). Have you used if before?
thx!
In Italy the default is fresh yeast, so most likely without any additional specification they mean fresh. The recommended sub ratio between dry and fresh somehow varies between different sources a bit, but typically it's said to be 2:1 or 3:1, fresh:dry (i.e. you need e.g. 7 g dry instead of 21 g fresh, for 3:1 ratio). Dry is definitely more "concentrated" than fresh!
Thank you guys for the clarification, you are all awesome!!
Mainly...
I use Italian recipes all the time. Italian default is fresh yeast, my default is dry. So I just use the proportion you mention. If you can provide a link to the recipe I could probably (hopefully) help. My Italian is limited to culinary stuff, but still :-)