February 13, 2016 - 10:49am
Amount of Yeast in Bertinet's White Dough
Newbie question incoming :)
In Bertinet's Dough (pg. 33), the white dough recipe calls for "1/3 ounce Fresh yeast (preferably) or 1/4-ounce envelope active dry yeast (1 1/2 teaspoons)". However, on my jar of Red Star yeast, it says that a 1/4 ounce packet is equivalent to approximately 2 1/4 teaspoons; no small difference! Can anyone shed some light on this?
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Bertinet is French living in the UK. That book was originally published in metric and badly translated. Although I'm in the UK, I have the US version of that book as the person who bought it for me was a cheap-skate and bought it via a grey import company )-:
The recipe is 7g dry yeast (standard sachet size in the UK), 500g flour and 350g water. ie it's a 70% hydration dough.
Which is the usual translation from the old standard loaf; 1lb flour and a ¼oz sachet of yeast.
My suggestion is to use weight. not teaspoons, cups, etc. but a ¼oz packet in 18oz of flour will work just fine.
-Gordon
Thanks so much for getting back to me! I went ahead and weighed it out (not sure why I didn't just do that in the first place!) and 1/4 oz is right around 2 1/4 teaspoons of yeast. That might explain why I've been having a hard time getting my dough to rise properly.
Are there any other things I should be aware of when using that book? Any errata, etc.?
I'm not aware of any errata, but I tend to use it more for ideas (shaping, fillings, etc.) than to follow his actual recipes... His olive dough is nice for more savoury things, and in you want to impress, the puff balls is worthwhile having a go at!
-Gordon