Fresh yeast substitutes
As many of you know it is getting exceedingly hard to source home baker quantities of fresh ( aka cake, compressed, etc) yeast. Even markets who would carry it for the holidays have totally discontinued it. High end/high volume bakeries may use it but they are not all that interested in selling bits off of their commercial sized cakes unless you regularly go drinking with the owner. And, yes one can source it online but only in large quantities ( it has nearly zero shelf life), shipping is outrageous and forget about shipping in warm/hot weather. So …
If you are baking highly enriched doughs nothing is as good of a leavening agent as fresh yeast. But how about “pretty ok”. Sugar and fats inhibit regular instant yeast. What improvement do you get with introducing a firm biga. How about using a VERY fresh and active ( low acid) natural levain? Any experiences with osmotolerant instant yeast?
Anxious to hear thoughts and experiences.
Paul
Vito Iacopelli and others have posted YouTube tutorials on how to make your own. Have not done but Vito has taught me a lot about making pizzas and focaccia, so I have no reason to doubt that he knows what he’s talking about.
If you try it, please report back to TFL. I’m sure it be of interest to some of us.
Here in Western Australia we are fortunate to have a grocer chain of local grocers that sell compressed yeast in much smaller chunks the one that i go to i usually buy the smallest package on the shelf and its priced at 1 cent per gram i usually manage to get it for less than a dollar and that will do me several bakes the shelf life is 1 month. a second store sells it at $2 per chunk all priced the same.its just sold on a plastic tray with cling wrap stretched over it.
There have been shortages just recently and ive been twice when there is none on the shelf. i did manage to find a store that was selling the SAF dried yeast in those red vacum paks but a much smaller and more convenient 125g rather than the 500g offered by most companies.
Any Doughs with a higher Sugar Content 10% will benefit greatly from this Yeast + and is also a great for Home Brew Sugar Washes as it will yield higher ABV :)
SAF in the gold packets