Red SAF vs Gold SAF Yeast

[cwcdesign]

I have researched this online and can't find out anything. I have a package of SAF Gold in my freezer unopened and I am beginning to run out of regular Red SAF instant. As you all know, yeast is hard to come by. (Going to try my hand at the Pineapple Juice starter next week).

Has anyone ever tried substituting the Gold for the Red? I was wondering if I used less, maybe half in a recipe if it would work.

What are your thoughts?

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[BakerAunt]

CWCdesign--If I'm baking a recipe that uses a lot of sugar, I find that I can use half as much of the gold yeast. When I baked the Pain du Chocolat, it was about 3 cups flour to 1/4 cup sugar, so I used a reduced amount of the gold yeast.

I've also used a combination of Gold and Red in the Grape Nuts Bread. Initially that was to use up some older gold yeast, but that bread tends to be sweeter and seems to benefit from the addition.

Len has used the gold in place of the red without any issues. I don't think that you need to halve the amount it when using it in a regular recipe; I only do that for higher sugar ones where the recipe says it will have a long rise. However, we have been discussing (somewhere among the threads) using less yeast in recipes in general.

[Mike Nolan]

There appear to be a number of commercial bakers who use SAF Gold exclusively, based on the comments in the BBGA forum. They echo what BakerAunt said about needing to use less than with SAF Red.

I saw SAF Red at Hy Vee the other day, Sams had the Fleischmann's IDY I've been using for the past 15 years, too. I haven't been to Costco recently, they were carrying Red Star back in January.

SAF Gold is still a little harder to find, but there was only one place in Linoln that I know carried it last year.

[cwcdesign]

Thanks, that was what I thought. I too have been reading about using less yeast in general and I must admit the recipe I made today could have been made with less yeast. It was the honey oat pan de pie from KAF and the recommendation was to scale that recipe up by 50% all ingredients except yeast to fit my larger pan de mie. I used 2 teaspoons and I think I could have used less.

I've also been following the Baking Steel blog and videos quite a bit and Andris (the owner) likes to do longer ferments with ¼ teaspoon yeast - Mrs Cindy had given me one of their baking steels when they first came out - we love it - we make pizza quite a bit. And, I made pita a couple of weeks ago. Need to try their naan - was disappointed in a naan recipe I tried. I also want to try their English muffins.

[RiversideLen]

I used to use the Red, then some years ago I tried the Gold. I've never done a side by side comparison. I didn't want to have two containers of yeast in my freezer (though I wouldn't mind it today!) so I just buy the Gold. I use it as I would any dry yeast, I make no adjustments with it. I haven't had any issues.

As far using less yeast, recently I have been doing that to conserve what I have, about 30 to 40 percent less. I have noticed the rise times are taking a little longer, but otherwise it's working out fine.

[cwcdesign]

Thanks Len!

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