cake yeast

Submitted by mpiasec on October 26, 2011 - 6:54am

found a old cookbook and a lot of recipe call for 1 cake yeast what is this eq to instanse yeast mike

3 comments

Submitted by nkmoss on November 23, 2010 - 10:28am

cake yeast

Can anyone help me? I am not much of a baker, but I found my mom's old receipe for bread and it call for a cake of yeast. I can't find cakes of yeast. What do I use in its place. Thanks in advance!!

2 comments

Submitted by senara on October 28, 2010 - 4:44am

Hi: I'm down here in Fort Lauderdale and I can't find cake (fresh) yeast anywhere. Does anyone know where I can buy some in this area? My bread just isn't the same. Also - if anyone knows where I might buy Irish wholemeal flour down here - I'll be your best friend forever. Thanks.

6 comments

Submitted by ejm on August 26, 2010 - 5:47am

re: yeast conversion from fresh to dry and calculator fun

This is mostly for amusement's sake.

Every so often, I want to make a recipe that calls for fresh yeast and I don't have fresh yeast. Of course, I have nothing against using fresh yeast. It's just not that easily found around here. Instead, I use the active dry yeast we always have on hand. (Why do I always choose active dry yeast? Because that’s what my mother always uses.)

In the past and quite recently, I have gone through various books and the internet looking for this conversion information. Here are some of the various formulae I have come across in my travels:

for every cup of flour in the recipe, use either of

3 grams compressed fresh yeast
2 grams active dry yeast
1 gram instant active dry yeast

-Maggie Glezer, "Artisan Baking Across America"

_____________________________

Substitute twice as much (by weight) fresh yeast for the amount of dry yeast called for in the recipe.

-Daniel Leader, "Local Breads"

_____________________________

1 g fresh = 0.5 g active dry = 0.4 g instant

-Susan (Wild Yeast), wildyeastblog.com

_____________________________

2+1/2 tsp (one package) active dry yeast = 18 gm cake fresh yeast

-Carol Field, "The Italian Baker"

_____________________________

A .6-oz [17gm] cube of cake yeast is roughly equivalent to 1½ to 2 tsp. instant yeast or 2 to 2¼ tsp. active dry yeast.

-Sydny Carter, Yeast: The Basics, allrecipes.com

_____________________________

One .6 ounce [17 grams] cake is equivalent to 1 envelope [.25 ounce/7 grams] of dry yeast.

-Fleischmann's Yeast FAQ, breadworld.com

_____________________________

yeast, compressed . . . . 1 cake, 3/5 oz . . . . 1 package active dry yeast

-Irma S. Rombauer, Know your ingredients, Joy of Cooking

_____________________________

1 packed tablespoon of fresh or cake yeast=21 grams which=2-1/2 [8gm] teaspoons active dry (so for 100 grams fresh yeast use 1/4 cup + 1/2 teaspoon or 40 grams active dry)

-Rose Levy Beranbaum, realbakingwithrose.com

_____________________________

If you are substituting active dry yeast for instant yeast in a recipe, [...] add about 20 percent more yeast to the recipe than what is called for. [...] If you encounter a recipe that uses fresh yeast, divide the weight by 3 to calculate the proper amount of instant yeast to use.

-Yeast FAQ, thefreshloaf.com

_____________________________

Some years ago, with mixed up logic, I managed to work out the following formula. Remarkably, the bread I made rose beautifully.

2½ tsp (8gm) active dry yeast = 50gm fresh yeast

-me, my house

Depending on whose formula I use, to replace 50gm fresh yeast, I should use anywhere from 8 to 32.5 gm active dry yeast. (I think I have the arithmetic right with the various formulae: 32.5gm, 25gm, 22.5gm, 20gm, 17.5-20gm, 17gm, 8.3 OR 8gm active dry in place of 50 gm fresh yeast)

So. After all these contortions? I've decided that I'll use the higher amount of active dry to replace fresh yeast if there's lots of sugar in the recipe, but the lower amount if there's little sugar in the recipe.

-Elizabeth

Here is a nifty javascript that one of my sisters created after hearing about this: