December 5, 2009 - 1:27pm
Commercial Yeast in your Sourdough?
In Ed Wood's Sourdough book [1], he writes to never mix commercial yeast into your sourdough starter or dough. I can understand the starter, but most of the books I've seen that address sourdough all call for a small amount of instant or active dry yeast. This seems like a contradiction to me -- is Ed Wood just taking the position of a purist?
It seems acceptable to use a small amount of commercial yeast in a sourdough bread recipe (1-2 grams) to boost the leavening power of the loaf. My understanding is that if you use too much yeast you'll loose the sour notes brought to bear by the sourdough starter itself.
Anyone want to weigh in on this?