Sourdough using commercial yeast..?? Need help.
My six month old wheat starter went into a comma last week after I forgot to feed it for long. Trashed it and started a new one 3 days back.
While waiting for the yeast to come in, I just thought of a little experimenting this morning. Had some commercial active dry yeast lying in the freezer for years. I added a pinch to warm water n flour, no bubbling or fizzing. I leave it for 2 hours and it doubles.
So, can I just feed discard feed every two hours and create a starter that will help me bake today or tommorrow? Anyone done something similar? The commercial yeast smells so different, nothing like the pleasant sweet smell of sourdough.
I have never worked with a sponge before but I am not sure if the active dry yeast in the freezer will work to make a commercial yeast bread using the standard recipe.
Any ideas / tips / recipes I can try with this commercial yeast sponge that takes two hours to double?
P.S. dont want to buy more commercial yeast as my wwf starter will be ready in two weeks.
if it doubles, i'd think it's alive. and it won't smell like sourdough on its own - it needs flour so it can be fed and develop some of the right bacteria.
why not feed the yeast with plenty of flour and see how it does? i started a starter with commercial yeast once and it went pretty well.
it started deflating so I stirred it up a bit (too much gluten in there unlike my wheat starters, they just liquify a bit when hungry). Watching it now to see if it rises again. I was just wondering at what intervals to feed it now since it tends work more quickly than wild yeast.
The first feed was white flour only. Maybe I should feed it some rye or wwf to get the right bacteria? What flour did you use for ur commercial yeast starter?
it just works better for me. then keep on the feeding with white flour (wheat).
why not feed it at least 2x its weight in flour twice a day and see how it goes?
lots of people feed their starters white flour, lots don't. breadtopia sells a dried starter that they recommend you use AP to feed https://breadtopia.com/starter_instructions/
i can't eat modern wheat - i'm allergic - so i used white spelt flour, which is unbleached, but sometimes threw in a little whole grain spelt which really got things bubbling.