Lately I’ve been having fun with a new ingredient in the kitchen…yeast. I have never really tried making breads before recently, I’ve always been told that making bread is hard, and that it is difficult to get them right. I have since discovered that while my mother does not seem to posses the bread making talent, I do. I have recently been  making a wide variety of breads (sticky buns, apple cinnamon bread, braided bread, yeast rolls). I am almost as fascinated with making yeasty breads as I am with working with clay.

Lately something has been puzzling me a bit though… the difference between “dry active yeast” and “quick rise yeast”. It is almost an endless wait for normal yeast (active dry) to do its work, but there is almost no wait with the quick rise. A recipe I made last night requires about 2 hours to rise (first proofing, then shaped rise) but when substituting in quick rise, it took 10 minutes for the first proof, and then only about 20 minutes for the shaped rise (only had 20 minutes to let it rise is how I found out), but the recipe ended up being almost the same as with the 2 hour wait. The texture was a little different, but the bread was perfectly leavened. Yeast, its amazing stuff 🙂