The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Greetings from South Africa

littlelisa's picture
littlelisa

Greetings from South Africa

Hi everyone

Just a brief hello - I'm a writer living in Cape Town, South Africa. Have been baking for years, but after a friend told me she's going to start supplying me with 12,5 kg bags of organic flour, I got hold of "Crust and Crumb" and started working on refining my bread baking practice. After a few monumental disasters (I think because what's called "instant yeast" here in S. Africa is a different product to the same named in the USA), I switched to fresh yeast and all has been well.

Looking forward to learning more on this site.

Lisa

pmccool's picture
pmccool

And welcome to The Fresh Loaf from a Pretoria member!

I'm an American ex-pat here in the RSA for a few more months.  The instant yeast that I have purchased in local supermarkets (sorry, can't remember the brand name but the packets were predominantly green in color) have worked well for me.  The bigger adjustment that I had was adapting to local flours.  Once I figured out what to do and how, things smoothed out.

Since you live the Mother City, you should have easy access to Eureka Meulens / Eureka Mills products.  I like their whole wheat flour better than any of the major brands like Sasko.  They also produce the only rye products that I have been able to find locally, even though the mill has to import the rye. 

Keep us posted on how your baking progresses.

Paul

littlelisa's picture
littlelisa

Hi all

Good to hear some local folks are around! I do use the Eureka Mills Flour - will look out for Golden Reef too. I'm not sure what went wrong when I used local instant yeast, but it  just doesn't seem to respond to water in the same way - perhaps because it's designed to be mixed into the flour? I'm also suspicious of it because it has so much information about being designed to cut kneading and rising time - when part of what I'm trying to do is draw out the rising time - no? Anyway, my local Spar is happy to supply lumps of the fresh stuff, so I'm more comfortable using that, as I can immediately see it starting to bubble and proof.

Thanks for the heads-up!

Cheers

Lisa