Hello from Cardiff
Hi all.
New member here from Cardiff. Have not done much baking, but bought a bread machine a few months ago and it has seen a lot of use. Hoping to get some tips and trips and widen the repertoire outside of the recipes in the manual!
One question for starters:
I have been struggling to get dried yeast, though managed to get a block of fresh yeast from Sainsburys bakery yesterday. I have read that i need to use 2% of the flour weight, so for a recipe that has 500g of flour, i use 10g of fresh yeast. Can i use this calculation and just do a straight replacement of fresh yeast for dried for the recipes in the manual?
Also, there is one recipe for fresh yeast in the manual. There're two differences in the recipe (apart from using fresh yeast). The first is that instead of using butter it asks for oil. Is this a normal substitution? If it is, what is the reason?
Thanks all!
Welcome, ND!
Replacing dried yeast in a recipe with fresh is not a 1:1 ratio. This image from Cook's Illustrated gives you an idea of what the ratios are. Hope this helps, and good luck with your baking!
I usually substitute fresh to dry yeast in the ratio 3:1, so if the recipe calls for 60g of fresh yeast, it is approximately 20g of dry yeast.
Yeast reproduces itself in the dough. So you can always start with less, and wait longer. I once baked for months out of a single quarter ounce (about 7 grams) packet of dried yeast -- sprinkle just a few grains into a little bowl of poolish (half water half flour by weight), let it sit an hour or two until bubbly, and then make up the dough.
So the amount of yeast called for in a recipe is mainly a matter of how much time you want the dough to take. One percent dried yeast weight to flour is pretty standard. Generally recipes that ask for more are trying to rush the process. This may be the case with a bread machine, if there are standard timings built into it. Folks who know the machines better may have useful advice here. You might also experiment with not using the machine, or using it for only parts of the process.