Rapid Rise. vs. instant yeast

If there's any difference at all I've never noticed it.  I tend to use them interchangeably.  I notice that she suggests there is a difference in flavor between Instant and Rapid Rise yeast in breads but I've never been aware of any such difference and I don't use enough yeast in my bread to qualify if as a "flavoring" anyway.

Making "instant" yeast requires different equipment. When the process was first invented, everybody wanted to get on the bandwagon, but nobody wanted to throw their old machinery away because it wasn't amortised yet. So various people came up with the "solution" of packaging the old-style yeast with a lot of weird chemicals that made it act sort of like new-style, and calling it "Rapid Rise".

Two things to be aware of:

• I doubt you'll find such comments in either much older or much newer recipe books than "The Italian Baker". The comment doesn't really apply to yeast in 201x; it's outdated.
• "Rapid Rise" still occasionally indicates some variation of the old funky game being played  ...but only for a few brands of yeast. Yeast terms are fortunately approximately (but still not exactly) the same across all brands.

As I understand it, Rapid Rise and Active Dry Yeast are the same yeast. Active Dry has a hard outer shell on it (to keep the yeast fresh) that must be dissolved in water before you add it to the flour. Rapid Rise can be added directly to the dry ingredients. It has no outer shell to dissolve.  Some recipes say you can add Active Dry directly. I tried this one time. There were little brown hulls left in my no-knead bread dough. It was still OK--kneading made most of them disappear. But, it's not something I'd want to repeat. Taste wise, there's no difference, IMHO.

At least, for the Fleischman product.  The problem is, there *are* 'rapid rise' yeasts out there that combine yeast with additives to reduce rise time.  Fleischman rapid rise yeast is, in fact, "instant" yeast, ie normal bakers yeast dried and formed into a finer granule, so that it can be incorporated directly into dry ingredients.

I suggest that you use "rapid rise vs. instant yeast" in the search box to see what other's have said.  This is one of those questions that comes up often and hence has been answered before.

I like Dimuzio's Bread Baking as a text book for newbies.  I recommend it all the time on this site.  Now I know I'm not alone in liking it.