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What kind of yeast for my focaccia?

alyssapissa44's picture
alyssapissa44

What kind of yeast for my focaccia?

Hi friends. This is my first time on here but I needed some of your expert advice.

I have been making focaccia for awhile now and I have two recipes I like to use. My first one only takes 12 hours on the countertop and the second is a slow 24 hour rise in the fridge. Both of these recipes use active dry yeast. 

I shared my 12 hour focaccia recipe with my mother in law recently and noticed that her bread had larger open crumbs than mine. We realized she was using instant yeast and dissolving it in water because thats what I told her to do, thinking she was using active dry yeast. 

She said her bread was still good and the crumbs looked amazing. I want to try dissolving my instant yeast in water now to see what will happen- I know though that it's not needed. 

My question is what do you think will happen if I use the instant yeast for my 24 hour focaccia recipe that sits in the fridge? My MIL used the 12 hour one. I want to experiment and see what kind of crumb and taste can be created but I'm afraid it may be too long of a proof for the yeast and it won't work (especially if I dissolve it in water first)?

I also add about a teaspoon of honey to both of my recipes when I use the active dry yeast. I'm wondering if that is still needed.

One other thing, my 12 hour bread has 1/2 tsp yeast with  2 1/2 cups water and 5 1/3 cups flour. The 24 hour one has 1 tsp of yeast, 1 1/4 cups water and 3 cups flour. 

Any advice or tips would be helpful, friends! Thank you

phaz's picture
phaz

To answer the question - nothing will happen ie you won't notice much of a difference if any at all. The yeast is essentially the same as in the same strains. Besides, focaccia is more about the Olive oil than anything else.

Martin Crossley's picture
Martin Crossley

They are the same thing, but the 'instant' variety has citric acid powder in it to help the yeast work a bit faster.

Maybe this thread will interest you:

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/2815/active-yeast-vs-instant-yeast

However, you might get more answers in a different part of the site - this is the 'sourdough' forum where people generally don't talk much about commercial yeast because it's a whole different variety to sourdough yeast :)

alyssapissa44's picture
alyssapissa44

Thank you for your help! I will add this to another forum also