Yeast - The Unsung Hero

Allinson's share with us their expert knowledge on the true unsung hero of bread baking – yeast…

 Making bread is a simple process using a small number of simple ingredients, but as flour is usually in the limelight, we thought it was time to shout about the unsung hero of bread baking; yeast! This little micro-organism really is the life and soul of the party. Let’s face it, your loaf will literally be flat without it.

So what do you need to know? Well let’s start with what the yeast does. It breaks down the starch in the flour into simple sugars, which it feeds on to create carbon dioxide. The gluten strands that make your dough lovely and stretchy hold the carbon dioxide in bubbles which expand the dough, making your bread rise. Pretty clever for a single-cell organism.

The Allinson's range has 3 different types of yeast and which can be used in slightly different ways:

NEW - Allinson's Time Saver Yeast

Allinson's know it takes time and effort to create your own delicious loaves at home, so you might not get the chance to indulge your bread baking habit as much as you’d like...That’s why they’ve channelled their 125 years of bread-making expertise and passion to bring you brand new Allinson’s Time Saver Yeast which reduces proving time by up to half. So now there’s no excuse to not get your hands doughy! Ready-weighed in a convenient sachet, Time Saver Yeast is the perfect partner for speedy hand baking* and you can use 1 sachet whenever a recipe calls for 7g of ‘Fast Action’, ‘Instant’ or ‘Easy Bake’ Yeast

Allinson's Easy Bake Yeast

Our Easy Bake yeast can be used in either hand baking or in a bread maker, and as the name suggests all you need to do is add it to the bowl and you are ready to go. We even make sachets which have the perfect amount (7g) to make 1 large loaf or a batch of rolls. If you aren’t using a sachet then measure out 2 teaspoons from your tin.

Allinson's Dried Active Yeast

This is a more traditional format and is only suitable for hand baking. This is because it needs waking up with a nice warm bath! Simply dissolve a teaspoon of sugar in 150ml of warm water and add 15g of dried active yeast, then whisk and leave in a warm place for 15 minutes or until there is a layer of froth on the surface. You can buy this yeast in a 125g tin.

 
You can interchange yeasts in a bread recipe, a simple conversion to remember is that 1 sachet of Allinson's Easy Bake yeast (7g) equates to 15g of Dried Active yeast.

The other thing to remember about yeast is that it is quite delicate. It doesn’t like to be in contact with salt for a long time as the salt will kill the yeast. Unless you have all your ingredients pre-measured try to add the salt and yeast to opposite sides of the bowl, and if you are using a bread maker, add the yeast first and the salt last.

Now that you know a bit more about yeast why not grab a sachet and use it to rise up to the bread baking challenge!