My bread has been giving me fits, refusing to rise. I finally read up on proofing commercial dry yeast and discovered that when I add it to some water and a little sugar, I should be getting it to foam so as to double its volume in ten minutes or so. Well, that hasn't been happening!
I figured, since I was getting at least a little reaction, there must be a few yeasts still alive in there, even if most of the package was on strike. The inactive ones don't do any harm, so I just kept increasing the total dried yeast until I got a good double-sized proof, and then used the whole batch in the bread. Voila, a loaf with enough rise to make sandwich bread.
6 comments:
You can also make a 'sponge' by adding sugar and water and just a cup of flour, stirring it all up, and putting it in the refrigerator overnight. If there's any active yeast, it'll breed itself into a foamy mess sooner usually overnight.
You can, of course, also wild-catch yeast. Just leave the sugar/water/flour mix exposed to the open air.
Sure, I've done that. I admit, I do it this way because I can have a loaf of bread within 3 hours start to finish, with no lingering duties to babysit the starter for the next few weeks. Also, I haven't ever been able to get a really exuberant rise out of a natural yeast starter: it takes patience and skill.
It's like expired medicine - except with that, you have to worry about side effects if you double up.
Nice problem solving, with delicious looking results!
How old was your yeast?
I mostly cook flatbreads, which take a lot less time to cook than loaves, and can be cooked in a skillet. Dump stuff on them to make a "pizza."
It was a couple of different batches from the grocery store, both with expiration dates in mid-2021. So it wasn't that old, but it may have been mistreated in a warehouse.
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