February 19, 2015 - 6:40am
Fresh/cake yeast in US recipes
Hi. I'm in the UK and do all my recipes in grams (as most people seem to do here anyway; bravi). I'm converting one for the US edition of a recipe book, and I'm trying to get my head around the best way to "translate" 20g of fresh/compressed/cake yeast.
Am I right in thinking that in the US fresh/compressed/cake yeast comes in packets of 2oz or 0.6oz? That is 57g and 17g. So 20g is 0.7oz, which would be around a third of a 2oz cake and about 1 1/5 0.6oz cakes?
See my predicament - neither of these options would read well in a recipe! What would be the most US-recipe-book-friendly way of putting that?
Thank in advance for any advice.
Dan
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Tell your editor that it's time to stop with that already. Do you know how annoying it is when a European book is reprinted here and becomes completely unusable because everything is converted to cups and completely messed up in the process? Ask him to look at the reviews and prices of the British and US editions of Jan Hedh's "Artisan Breads" and think long and hard about what he/she is doing.
PS. Fresh yeast is only available in 2 oz packages these days.
It's not my book, but a book I've contributed a recipe to. It's not specifically a baking book.
We're aware that converting between grams and cups (sticks etc) is problematic - hence my query. But publishers still seem to think it's necessary for US editions.
I'm confused. I get the impression that a lot of US home cooks still don't like to use scales, or indeed own scales, and prefer to stick with cups. Am I wrong? Is every US home cook now an owner of scales and happy to use grams?
As for Hedhs' book, it sells on Amazon.co.uk for £55 (US$85) and Amazon.com for US$192 (£126). The former has two 5 star reviews, the latter has no reviews. I can see the thread on here (http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/25574/jan-hedh-book-released-no-weight-measurements) and the grievance appears to be that the US edition removed the grams entirely.
As I understand it, this book I'm involved would give grams and cups.
Thanks,
Dan
You are looking at the British edition. The American one has crappy reviews and costs ~$3.
You've already recognized the fact that package sizes are different on each side of the Atlantic. If you want the book to be broadly suitable for an American audience (most of whom are oriented to volume measurements), the recipes should be reconfigured to reflect the American ingredients and units and pan sizes and temperatures and so on. That amounts to a total rewrite, I suspect.
The other course is to simply change the units on everything to U.S. equivalents and not worry about how things are packaged here. The recipes may call for ingredients (golden syrup springs to mind) that aren't readily available here, so you might want to put in some information about substitutions. What I have been frustrated with in some UK or European cookbooks is the combination of weight and volume measurements in the same recipe; e.g., sugar in grams and milk in deciliters. If you list weights for all ingredients, I would be very grateful.
Best of luck with the book.
Paul
P.S. Welcome to The Fresh Loaf!
Thanks Paul.
It's certainly a challenge, and something of a can of worms as you've indicated.
It's actually a friend's book on Roman food, so many of it is recipes are for soups, pasta dishes etc, which are a lot more forgiving when it comes to weights and measures. Indeed, a lot of Italian recipes use QB - quanto basta, "how much is enough", anyway. Baking recipes need to be more specific though, esp for inexperienced bakers.
Whereas most European bread bakers are used to baking with fresh yeast, and it's available everywhere, it is much harder to find in the US (at least here in Maine).
American bread baking books therefore usually list instant (fast action) or active dry yeast, and not fresh yeast. (100% fresh yeast = 50% active dry yeast = 33% instant yeast.)
When I bought Dan Lepard's "Short and Sweet" I especially ordered it from amazon.uk after reading complaints of reviewers about the conversion to volume measures in the US edition.
Karin
Yes, we generally include fresh, ADY and instant in the recipes too. It all gets v unwieldy though!
might include the size in a cube. 3/4" cube, 1" cube, or 1 1/4" cube, or 1 1/2" cube, just for an idea. Time to dig out rulers, scale and a knife. How big of a cube is 20g? That also comes closer to the idea of "walnut" sized.
So, my fellow Americans, what's the dimention of a 2oz piece of fresh yeast? Anyone have their fresh yeast and ruler handy? Even if not a perfect cube, give the size and somebody clever can figure it out. :)
Actually a one oz. or 28g piece is more practical. Can you cut that 2oz piece in half and shape it into a cube and measure it? Thanks.