The yeast shortage

[Mike Nolan]

I've read that you can sometimes find yeast cakes in the freezer section, but I've not seen any there locally. They'd be so small I could have overlooked them, though.

[BakerAunt]

I recall the packages being about the size of a matchbox, although perhaps more square, in an open box with perhaps a dozen.

[kimbob]

My mother always made Christmas stollen using yeast cakes. It definitely makes the texture different than dry yeast. I was finally able to find fresh cake yeast this year at a market that has specialty items and they didn't have much of it. I made stollen with dry and fresh yeast and the stollen made with fresh yeast was better. There's just something about it -- a little moister, springier and a bit of a cakelike texture.

[Mike Nolan]

Yeah, that's what I remember them being, too. NY Bakers sells a one-pound yeast cake, I may order one at some point just for the experience. Liquid yeast isn't available in sizes home bakers could utilize.

[kimbob]

Bakers authority website has saf instant yeast in stock but I bet the shipping is a killer. My niece-in-law ordered a 50 lb bag of flour from them a couple weeks ago because she couldn't find any where she lives in NJ. Said the shipping was high. She was going to split the 50 lbs with her mom. Guess it depends how desperate you are!

[RiversideLen]

I was just browsing Whole Foods at Amazon, they have fresh cake yeast, 2 ounce cakes, available. They are also showing envelopes of active dry yeast available.

[Mike Nolan]

Given that cake yeast needs to be kept refrigerated and has a fairly short shelf life, ordering it through Amazon seems problematical, but maybe they've got it in stock at their store? I don't get there very often and I'm not sure where it'd be.

[BakerAunt]

I first started cutting back on yeast years ago when I read that too much yeast causes bread to dry out faster. I wonder if dried yeast recipes just use more yeast as insurance.

In reading reviews of a couple of Swedish baking books, including the one I own which has disappointed me, I noticed that someone commented on the books' propensity for fresh yeast, and one person commented, "which seems to be available on every corner in Sweden," that is, if you can believe the baking books. My assessment is that the professional bakers who write these books have easy access to fresh yeast, and neither they nor their editors and publishers think about how recipes bake in a home kitchen with the supplies that a home baker will have. Ideally, baking books would have user tests before they are printed.

[Mike Nolan]

Books written by an author in another country are prime candidates for mistaken assumptions about what ingredients are available. Flours are where this often shows up, because the flours available in Europe are so different from the ones available in the USA.

I know Peter Reinhart generally has a group of reviewers test his recipes, because I've been in that test group for two of his books. Testing recipes for an author can be an intense experience because there are often a LOT of recipes to test and not much time to do it in. Testing all 78 recipes in The Rye Baker would have been a major challenge, for example, even before the lockdown caused so many ingredients to become scarce commodities.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Whole Foods at Amazon does not ship through Amazon. They let you order groceries from one of your local WFs and then someone goes through the store, fills your order, and delivers it to your house. The app is not great but it's the best service we have for this and for not going to the store.

Around us they are talking about opening some WFs just to fill Amazon orders. The logistics of it are pretty inefficient and the apps is built backwards but it's better than anything anyone else offers by us.

[RiversideLen]

Yes, Whole Foods Amazon is for local delivery so you have to have a store reasonably close to you. Before Whole Foods was bought by Amazon, you could get local delivery through Insta Cart. I realize not not everyone has access to it but the point I was wanted to make is that fresh cake yeast can be found, at least in some areas. Also, there is yeast to be had out there somewhere, maybe (hopefully) it will start to show up on store shelves soon.

[aaronatthedoublef]

My friend is now selling fresh yeast telling people to use approximately twice as much as dry yeast. Also at least one of the local beer making supply stores I checked has dry and fresh yeasts. It might be interesting to go there as they have different strains. ANOTHER experiment to try!

[Mike Nolan]

According to one of the certified master bakers on the BBGA forum, brewer's yeast doesn't have a lot of protease, so it doesn't perform well in bread, because protease is what helps breaks down the starches into sugars that yeast can digest.

But it'd be interesting to try it, wouldn't it?

[BakerAunt]

I've been experimenting with cutting back on yeast. For the 8x4 loaf I baked today, I used 1 3/4 tsp. yeast rather than 2 tsp.

On the Pumpkin-Ginger Braid that I baked yesterday (and it is delicious, particularly with a Greek Yogurt-Cream Cheese blend that Kroger sells), I cut back 1 Tbs. to 2 3/4 tsp. The rise and bread came out great.

In fairness, I also cut back the salt by 1/4 tsp in both breads. I have a hypothesis that recipe developers don't like to use 3/4 tsp. measurements where yeast is concerned.

• This reply was modified 4 years ago by BakerAunt.

[Mike Nolan]

Maybe they don't realize that 1/2 + 1/4 = 3/4?

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