Any experience with SAF Instant Premium/Purple Yeast?

[MixUp]

Small scale home baking in doughs I use milk or light cream and water.
Full fat powdered hi heat powder is expensive but it was nice to use.

!/2 sheetpans are cheap, you could try an angle grinder with a steel brush wheel or oven cleaner.
Blow torch and scraper.

Shipping might be coming from different locales, I do ok on amazon but they don't have specialty stuff.

The KAF "Baker's Special Dry" isn't exactly cheap, and it's not full fat...but that's not the end of the world. Can always add in some fat elsewhere. Having to scald milk just really drives me crazy....

I actually just bought a year of KAF's Rewards Plus for $40. Free shipping for orders over $25, which with their shipping, pays. I ordered some things that would have been $12 in shipping so the membership really cost $28 for the year. And for each individual $60+ order you get a $10 gift card, plus their regular $10 card for every $100 spent total. Not a bad little program. I might have to start buying my flour direct instead of at the supermarket. Same price but without the rewards. Shame they don't sell the #50lb bags direct anymore. That's one thing I would go through 50+# easily. Even if I mostly mix 50/50 with my own milled grain, that gets expensive (with shipping ,etc wheat berries, especially heirloom wheats come out to $3lb or so. And if you're sifting for a pastry flour you're losing about 15-20%. I'll buy enough additives and misc things to justify it.

Yeah half sheets are cheap-ish (heavier gauge ones add up.) I liked these old ones though. They were a mix of Cadco's pans which were rebadged Polarware, and genuine Polarware. Old school Polarware...the heavy stuff. Polarware itself doesn't do pans anymore, they've gone 100% medical, but Vollrath is really part of them...the new Vollrath half sheets are nice, but even the heavy ones are 16 gauge and not as nice. Those old ones were like 13ga plates. The wire rusts though.

Webstaurant has a membership plan but it's clearly only for full commercial at $100/mo. You have to be buying a whooole lot for that to pay. Even small shops don't really benefit from that assuming you have multiple suppliers. I just wish their shipping was more predictable. It partly is the separate warehouses....but when I stared buying from them they had only one warehouse, so service really got worse rather than better when they expanded. I spend weeks playing with my cart and watching shipping costs without actually buying anything because I have to get the order "just right" - then I end up buying half of it somewhere else that doesn't need me to do that. I'd buy a lot more from them if shipping was actually predictable without playing "shopping cart Jenga" until shipping breaks. And worse, I try to consolidate everything into one order, and then realize I have a $500 cart because I wanted to buy a $20 pan, scrub the whole thing, and buy the pan for $37 somewhere else. I adore the store, but shopping can be a mix of frustration and gambling.


I finally got around to making bread! That was my missing link between just messing around and being all-in again. The Cadco held up nicely. The Silpats are garbage that degrade and feel greasy, but the Silpains are fantastic. I leave one on the floor of the oven to use it as a shelf/tile mat and it's still pliable and nice.

You were curious about the EH pans. I have to say, those suckers may be ridiculously expensive, but they are worth every single penny. I think I'm going to have to collect pairs of the entire set. Probably costs more than just getting a steam oven that way. But boy they sure perform, both in the big and little things. The finish is fantastic, they feel sturdy, and unlike nearly all ceramic/stoneware they go freezer to oven. Most stoneware warns to preheat the pan with the oven. These can go in cold with cold dough, so you can proof in the pan. Though the cloche, artisan, ciabatta, and baguette pans you probably want to transfer the proofed loaf into the hot pan directly (and the baguette and ciabatta pans are to long for the B&T proofers.) The instructions say to butter and flour the pan. Flour sounds like a bad plan. It's just going to burn. I used olive oil.

I decided to start with the crown pans and just used the included "no knead" white roll recipe...better to start with something designed to fit the pan. I started with the SAF Premium/Purple yeast, but since it's an overnight retard, I was afraid that the cold-resistant very active yeast would be too much, starve, and collapse in the fridge. The recipe in English is a mess. The imperial weights don't match the metric...I stuck to the French recipe's metric. It called for "5g dry active yeast". They don't use active dry, and it's not called "dry active", in France much if at all, so that label sounds suspect. I assume they meant Instant dry. There's a 25% difference between using the two. I did a double batch (2 pans) but I backed off to 7g yeast instead of 10. Purple/Premium seems meant for "high speed process" - straight dough, and I wasn't sure how it handles a retard or preferment. A bit less sounded like a smart idea.

It inflated in the proofer a bit with the rest. I gave it about 15-16 hours refrigerated. Not sure how it would do with 24 hours in the fridge, but it seems like it worked out pretty well. It blew the lid off the bowl in the fridge, but didn't collapse. I don't know why they call it "no knead" - I had to knead just to get it into the elastic ball it specified. I thought no knead were wet doughs. This isn't. The recipe is essentially baguette dough, flour, water, yeast, salt. But low hydration, less sticky, less slack. The opposite of no knead. Fun dough to work with though. It's the ideal texture for working and shaping without frustration. Kind of zen. I did have to add more water during mixing. I let the KA 600 do it. It struggled a bit with the double batch....hook moved in some jumps and starts. But the motor never heats up for me. Even with the pasta rollers. Worst heating is when whipping buttercream....that's a long run at high speed.

Now, the pans are ungainly. They barely fit in the half sheet oven. The one has to sit on the Silpain on the floor. The other on the rack sags and rests on the bottom pan, and the top squeezes in against the broiler support bars. The lids have no handles, just a cutout doubling as a steam vent. This lets you stack them inside each other but makes removing the lid in the oven more dangerous and cumbersome than it should be. But these things truly double as both a stone and a steam injector. I just set the timer about 5 or so minutes more than the recipe (450F vs 575-500 called for due to the oven limits), took the lids off, let them sit another 5 or so to brown, and they came out perfect. The oven has one hot spot somewhere....there was some hardening/overbrowning on two rolls in one pan. But what came out was flawless otherwise. Perfect, dense, crispy crust. Soft, light, chewy, spongy, tight crumb. Oven spring was fantastic, even going in in a cold pan. I wasn't quite sure about the final proof having the right bulk, but they sure sprang in the oven! I'm not sure how much of the final result is the pan, the yeast, or a combination but it's absolutely a winner. Next time I might try increasing the yeast to accelerate the proofing, but I don't want to overdo the cold fermentation and burn it out. But these rolls (hearty french bread type large rolls with a thick chew, not milk roll type rolls), are perfect in every way. They look perfect, they taste perfect, the texture and crumb is perfect. All without blasting my face with steam and flour. Removing the pans (and lids!) is a trick though. They're quite literally glazed oven stones shaped like a pan. They are dangerously hot, and remain dangerously hot for some time. Don't sit them near plastic of any kind!

I still need to get some SAF Gold for when I do the enriched Easter breads. That stuff is like 13.5% sugar even excluding butter & dairy, and exceeds what this is rated for. But I'm having mixed thoughts about the Fermipan now. It adds shipping from Westauarant no matter what I buy with, so it's expensive, and this stuff performs so well, and the result was such a wonderful texture anyway, maybe I'd be better off, for the whole wheat loaves, sticking with this and some whole wheat improper from KAF.

I can't find any information on what's even in the Fermipan's conditioner. I ruled out Reddi Sponge. That has a bromate in there. Nasty stuff. Honeyville's exchanges the Bromate for a Sulfate. Better, but not by much. How hard is it to sell a conditioner without toxins? I assume Fermipan is better only because it's not made in the US. Most conditioners are made in the US, and we allow all sorts of weird chemicals that the rest of the world banned. Even China banned bromates...not exactly renowned for their chemical restrictions in food or air. That's now nasty it is. I'm far, far, far from the health food nuts but there are some things that when you know what you're eating, you really rethink eating it.... It's like finding out the ganache came from next to a fire hydrant.

Mostly I need a preservative though. Great bread is great, but I do need it to endure a bit.

So far, SAF purple is a huge success, and since reducing it makes it survive a long retard, I can't see a need to buy SAF Red again. Officially Red includes recommendation for Artisan bread (implying preferment) while Purple is not and seems straight-dough oriented. But it seems to work. Needs a little more attention to quantity, but can accelerate the proof. Apparently without flavor impact.

 

[retired baker]

The KAF "Baker's Special Dry" isn't exactly cheap, and it's not full fat...but that's not the end of the world. Can always add in some fat elsewhere. Having to scald milk just really drives me crazy....

I actually just bought a year of KAF's Rewards Plus for $40. Free shipping for orders over $25, which with their shipping, pays. I ordered some things that would have been $12 in shipping so the membership really cost $28 for the year. And for each individual $60+ order you get a $10 gift card, plus their regular $10 card for every $100 spent total. Not a bad little program. I might have to start buying my flour direct instead of at the supermarket. Same price but without the rewards. Shame they don't sell the #50lb bags direct anymore. That's one thing I would go through 50+# easily. Even if I mostly mix 50/50 with my own milled grain, that gets expensive (with shipping ,etc wheat berries, especially heirloom wheats come out to $3lb or so. And if you're sifting for a pastry flour you're losing about 15-20%. I'll buy enough additives and misc things to justify it.

Yeah half sheets are cheap-ish (heavier gauge ones add up.) I liked these old ones though. They were a mix of Cadco's pans which were rebadged Polarware, and genuine Polarware. Old school Polarware...the heavy stuff. Polarware itself doesn't do pans anymore, they've gone 100% medical, but Vollrath is really part of them...the new Vollrath half sheets are nice, but even the heavy ones are 16 gauge and not as nice. Those old ones were like 13ga plates. The wire rusts though.

Webstaurant has a membership plan but it's clearly only for full commercial at $100/mo. You have to be buying a whooole lot for that to pay. Even small shops don't really benefit from that assuming you have multiple suppliers. I just wish their shipping was more predictable. It partly is the separate warehouses....but when I stared buying from them they had only one warehouse, so service really got worse rather than better when they expanded. I spend weeks playing with my cart and watching shipping costs without actually buying anything because I have to get the order "just right" - then I end up buying half of it somewhere else that doesn't need me to do that. I'd buy a lot more from them if shipping was actually predictable without playing "shopping cart Jenga" until shipping breaks. And worse, I try to consolidate everything into one order, and then realize I have a $500 cart because I wanted to buy a $20 pan, scrub the whole thing, and buy the pan for $37 somewhere else. I adore the store, but shopping can be a mix of frustration and gambling.


I finally got around to making bread! That was my missing link between just messing around and being all-in again. The Cadco held up nicely. The Silpats are garbage that degrade and feel greasy, but the Silpains are fantastic. I leave one on the floor of the oven to use it as a shelf/tile mat and it's still pliable and nice.

You were curious about the EH pans. I have to say, those suckers may be ridiculously expensive, but they are worth every single penny. I think I'm going to have to collect pairs of the entire set. Probably costs more than just getting a steam oven that way. But boy they sure perform, both in the big and little things. The finish is fantastic, they feel sturdy, and unlike nearly all ceramic/stoneware they go freezer to oven. Most stoneware warns to preheat the pan with the oven. These can go in cold with cold dough, so you can proof in the pan. Though the cloche, artisan, ciabatta, and baguette pans you probably want to transfer the proofed loaf into the hot pan directly (and the baguette and ciabatta pans are to long for the B&T proofers.) The instructions say to butter and flour the pan. Flour sounds like a bad plan. It's just going to burn. I used olive oil.

I decided to start with the crown pans and just used the included "no knead" white roll recipe...better to start with something designed to fit the pan. I started with the SAF Premium/Purple yeast, but since it's an overnight retard, I was afraid that the cold-resistant very active yeast would be too much, starve, and collapse in the fridge. The recipe in English is a mess. The imperial weights don't match the metric...I stuck to the French recipe's metric. It called for "5g dry active yeast". They don't use active dry, and it's not called "dry active", in France much if at all, so that label sounds suspect. I assume they meant Instant dry. There's a 25% difference between using the two. I did a double batch (2 pans) but I backed off to 7g yeast instead of 10. Purple/Premium seems meant for "high speed process" - straight dough, and I wasn't sure how it handles a retard or preferment. A bit less sounded like a smart idea.

It inflated in the proofer a bit with the rest. I gave it about 15-16 hours refrigerated. Not sure how it would do with 24 hours in the fridge, but it seems like it worked out pretty well. It blew the lid off the bowl in the fridge, but didn't collapse. I don't know why they call it "no knead" - I had to knead just to get it into the elastic ball it specified. I thought no knead were wet doughs. This isn't. The recipe is essentially baguette dough, flour, water, yeast, salt. But low hydration, less sticky, less slack. The opposite of no knead. Fun dough to work with though. It's the ideal texture for working and shaping without frustration. Kind of zen. I did have to add more water during mixing. I let the KA 600 do it. It struggled a bit with the double batch....hook moved in some jumps and starts. But the motor never heats up for me. Even with the pasta rollers. Worst heating is when whipping buttercream....that's a long run at high speed.

Now, the pans are ungainly. They barely fit in the half sheet oven. The one has to sit on the Silpain on the floor. The other on the rack sags and rests on the bottom pan, and the top squeezes in against the broiler support bars. The lids have no handles, just a cutout doubling as a steam vent. This lets you stack them inside each other but makes removing the lid in the oven more dangerous and cumbersome than it should be. But these things truly double as both a stone and a steam injector. I just set the timer about 5 or so minutes more than the recipe (450F vs 575-500 called for due to the oven limits), took the lids off, let them sit another 5 or so to brown, and they came out perfect. The oven has one hot spot somewhere....there was some hardening/overbrowning on two rolls in one pan. But what came out was flawless otherwise. Perfect, dense, crispy crust. Soft, light, chewy, spongy, tight crumb. Oven spring was fantastic, even going in in a cold pan. I wasn't quite sure about the final proof having the right bulk, but they sure sprang in the oven! I'm not sure how much of the final result is the pan, the yeast, or a combination but it's absolutely a winner. Next time I might try increasing the yeast to accelerate the proofing, but I don't want to overdo the cold fermentation and burn it out. But these rolls (hearty french bread type large rolls with a thick chew, not milk roll type rolls), are perfect in every way. They look perfect, they taste perfect, the texture and crumb is perfect. All without blasting my face with steam and flour. Removing the pans (and lids!) is a trick though. They're quite literally glazed oven stones shaped like a pan. They are dangerously hot, and remain dangerously hot for some time. Don't sit them near plastic of any kind!

I still need to get some SAF Gold for when I do the enriched Easter breads. That stuff is like 13.5% sugar even excluding butter & dairy, and exceeds what this is rated for. But I'm having mixed thoughts about the Fermipan now. It adds shipping from Westauarant no matter what I buy with, so it's expensive, and this stuff performs so well, and the result was such a wonderful texture anyway, maybe I'd be better off, for the whole wheat loaves, sticking with this and some whole wheat improper from KAF.

I can't find any information on what's even in the Fermipan's conditioner. I ruled out Reddi Sponge. That has a bromate in there. Nasty stuff. Honeyville's exchanges the Bromate for a Sulfate. Better, but not by much. How hard is it to sell a conditioner without toxins? I assume Fermipan is better only because it's not made in the US. Most conditioners are made in the US, and we allow all sorts of weird chemicals that the rest of the world banned. Even China banned bromates...not exactly renowned for their chemical restrictions in food or air. That's now nasty it is. I'm far, far, far from the health food nuts but there are some things that when you know what you're eating, you really rethink eating it.... It's like finding out the ganache came from next to a fire hydrant.

Mostly I need a preservative though. Great bread is great, but I do need it to endure a bit.

So far, SAF purple is a huge success, and since reducing it makes it survive a long retard, I can't see a need to buy SAF Red again. Officially Red includes recommendation for Artisan bread (implying preferment) while Purple is not and seems straight-dough oriented. But it seems to work. Needs a little more attention to quantity, but can accelerate the proof. Apparently without flavor impact.

You should put a video on youtube of those bread pans, there isn't much information in the form of user reviews online.
And you know... without pics it never happened.

 

[MixUp]

You should put a video on youtube of those bread pans, there isn't much information in the form of user reviews online.
And you know... without pics it never happened.

Haha, oh, the self recording thing is definitely not in my skill set. Besides my phonebooth of horrors kitchen definitely isn't presentable for public consumption

I did take some stills of the resulting bread though. I'll have to at least display them here at some point. Although the dusting of flour looks like little blobs of flour on the pictures. It doesn't look so localized and concentrated in real life.

The only thing I do wish though is I could find some effective anti-staling agent that wouldn't affect the texture too noticeably. Day 2 and it already had a pretty dense chew to it. Reddi Sponge, in addition to being technically toxic, is dairy based. That doesn't belong in a lean dough in my mind. Most conditioners mess up the crumb. I may have to modify the recipe from a retard to a preferment just to get that extra durability out of it. That's going to involve some weird yeast adjustment though. Might have to post a different thread to delve into preferments and delayed ferments.

I picture using that super powerful yeast in tiny increments with a 2+ day preferment in the fridge (or 1/2 day on the table), and then mixing the final dough with a larger amount of yeast so I can accelerate the second bulk ferment and final proof, using the preferment for the bulk of flavor.

It's seriously some of the best bread I've ever made in that oven, though. Possibly the very best. Not bad for the first run at a new recipe with a new baking vessel, and the first loaf I've made in a decade. I just wish that fitting 2 pans didn't require squashing the broiler element a bit and sitting the pans atop each other. No other way to do it....

 

[MixUp]

You should put a video on youtube of those bread pans, there isn't much information in the form of user reviews online.
And you know... without pics it never happened.

I'm really loving the EH pans and am pretty eager to get more of the collection. They perform spectacularly in every way but maintaining shelf/oven space. It's more annoying that just shoving dough onto a stone, having to deal with pans all the time, but to be able to get honest steamed brick oven results without the oven is priceless.

I'm still working out the SAF Premium..... I love the stuff. I can't see going back to Red, ever, I'm a true convert now. But it means playing with yeast percentage way more than I'm used to. They advertise it as "for high speed process", and imply it's not for slow ferments, and the only difference in their sell sheets between Red and Premium in terms of what the recommend it for is Red lists artisan, Prem doesn't. Prem lists croissant. Red does not. "Artisan bread" people seem to stick to Red. KAF and Breadtopia don't sell Prem. I say it's hogwash, it works great for slow ferments, just cut back on the amount used (which is also one of it's marketing features.)

Still need SAF Gold for sweet doughs. That one is a wholly different strain that thrives in low moisture in high sugar/fat dough. But yet Gold says it can be used for hearth bread (even though it's for 10-30% sugar), and people use it for all bread. People use Red for sweet bread. And Premium sits between. Who knows. But I figure the Gold legitimately is tailored for low moisture/high sugar dough and probably does perform differently. Premium seems to be what Red wanted to be....I'm not sure what the advantages of red actually are compared to it at this point.

It probably does perform a little faster than Red, but the two main things I've noticed about Premium are:
1) It's impervious to cold water. Seriously, Red, you had to warm your water to lukewarm a little to ensure the yeast gets active. The Premium I'm throwing in very cold water from an remineralized RO system in a closet on the floor, in the cold. Probably 40 degree water or so at best. It doesn't care, it starts inflating in minutes.

2) It's a weird behavior. The final proof, does NOT rise very high. They say it rises 30% faster than regular yeast. For bulk ferment I believe it. For final proof, I can leave it there 40 min, and in 60 min it doesn't look much different. In the case of the loaf pans, it didn't even expand to reach the sides of the pan, there was still a gap after 40 minutes at 86F. It grew, but not substantially. Same behavior in the dinner rolls. But (and part of this is probably the EH pans and the slow heat to temp without a preheated stone), the oven spring is spectacular! I'm used to final proof yielding your finished size minus a little bit. Not this stuff. Either the EH pans, the Premium, or the combination yields most of the final size happening in the oven. The loaves expanded to normal loaf size in the oven. The rolls open up full size and create the "pull apart" connection in the oven, not the proofer. Weird, but very cool behavior.

I used it in the EH loaf pans for the included sesame honey whole wheat bread. I converted the recipe to use a poolish, though the poolish was underripe when I used it. The loaves taste great, and do have very good texture, however their appearance looked a little compact. I thought I might have messed up, but when I compared to the pictures in the booklet, their loves are similarly compact, so that's just the recipe with 71% WW and a ton of sesames weighing down the top in the oven. Plus I think they got the book wrong. The recipe printed in the French half of the book calls for 800g flour. The same recipe in the English half of the book calls for 420g flour. Almost half! I think the loaf ought to contain more dough than the 420g recipe to fill the pan properly. However I think 800g would overflow the pan and stick to the lid if you got good oven spring. Maybe they scaled it back because it would weigh itself down and be too hard to leaven if it were so heavy. Maybe that's why it fits in the pan at 800g. It's pretty weird they did that. I'd trust the French recipe since it's a French product first and foremost and it's sold as a pain de mie there. But 800g, seeing what 420 does, I'm not convinced actually fits. The bread taste and "mouthfeel" of the crumb is excellent, if a little compact, the crust is perfect, more tender than the French rolls' big crust. But the shape is a shorter, flatter loaf, not a full sandwich slice. Maybe it could rise better with a more ripe preferment. Or more commercial yeast. Or a second knead. But I suspect it's just a simple matter of not enough dough. Maybe on purpose?

I then adapted the french dinner rolls for the crown baker to be 20% WW durum. I'm a huge sucker for semolina breads. SAF Prem. A little extra hydration. 1g more yeast than the white rolls. 16 or 17 hours in the fridge. I was afraid the yest would overeat and collapse but it endured wonderfully despite being so active. This time I took out the rolling pin to roll a rectangle out for shaping (cylinder, cut, then I gather & tuck each roll into a mini boule.) Rolling it out and degassing better gave it a tighter, softer crumb than the hand-patted french bread rolls that had a more open, chewy baguette-like crumb. Proofed at 84 for 45 min. They didn't grow much...a little, they had very loose connections to each other in spread...maybe 20-30% bulk. Threw them in the crown pan into the oven, and they sprang like crazy and baked up beautifully. The crust is a bit thinner and softer than the white rolls, nice orange tinge.....fantastic, cake-like crumb.

I was going to get the ciabatta or baguette pans next, but I can't get reliable measurements. If they're the same height as the crown they'll fit, stacked, and scrape along the broiler harness bracket. If they're slightly taller I can't fit 2 at a time. The italian long loaf pans look decent. They have a new artisan bread baker that seems more for batards. But weird in that it's a deep vessel rather than a cloche-like flat stone. Not sure which is next for me.

Oh, I ended up acquiring an 18" rolling pin. Maple. A bit north of 4lb. I wish I did that 15 years ago! My old dowel was stored and had a slight mildew on it....I don't trust that. And the taper isn't good for breads, so rather than a new dowel I decided to try the bearing type. I went big for the weight and the fact that the Ateco 18" has a silicone sleeve available for it to make it a silicone pin. I looked at aluminum, but the maple was actually heavier. Nobody makes a 6lb pin anymore like yours!

It's not too big, IMO. I love the large dia barrel after all that time with French sticks, and even on my lowly 23x17 pastry board on a folding table it works wonderfully! Makes everything so much faster and less stress. Can't roll horizontally with the backsplash blocking the handles, but I can just rotate the dough.

 

[retired baker]

Don't be afraid to go off reservation with yeast in recipes, I regularly used 3x the amount , cold proofed and let it explode in the oven.

You can flatten butter with a big rolling pin, hold it by the barrel ...not the handle. and just tap it slowly.
Or get a baseball bat and cut the handle off.

That premuim yeast sounds like fresh cake yeast, cold water proofing etc.
I'll have to try it for croissant.

 

[MixUp]

Don't be afraid to go off reservation with yeast in recipes, I regularly used 3x the amount , cold proofed and let it explode in the oven.

You can flatten butter with a big rolling pin, hold it by the barrel ...not the handle. and just tap it slowly.
Or get a baseball bat and cut the handle off.

That premuim yeast sounds like fresh cake yeast, cold water proofing etc.
I'll have to try it for croissant.

Wow, that's a LOT of extra yeast! he Reddi Sponge probably made it a bit more stable for the yeast overdose by throwing some more food in there. This stuff....I think you'd end up with a blowout pretty fast. I can mix it with ice water, let it rest a little, come back, and it's enough to punch down. First rise seems a LOT faster than final proof, though. I'm mostly going in the opposite direction, dialing it back to keep the yeast from consuming everything before it's ready when I have a cold ferment or extended ferment, but I'm steadily increasing it a bit. For preferment and cold bulk ferment I need 18-24 hours usually, so I can't boost it too much without risking collapse.

Yeah, it does seem a bit like fresh. Active dry needs the hot water proof, instant dry normally just goes into the dry, but you need water to be lukewarm or at least "not cold" - this stuff blasts off in near ice water. I really can't figure out what advantages the Red pack would offer that you might choose it instead. This one requires more "fiddling" with it to get right, I think, but I feel like I can control the yeast a lot more than with the SAF Red where Red just kind of tells you when its ready and you can't do much about it. This one is maybe more technical. You have to actively play with the numbers rather than just throw some in and wait for it to be done.

I think when I start in on the Easter breads in a few weeks, I think I'm going to take one batch of 2 and make them in separate bowls. One with SAF Gold and one with Premium. I'll see if there's a real difference in them (though they must proof and bake together.) If there's no difference I can probably just use Premium for everything. That's a 14% sugar dough even before the diary.

If you grab some for croissant I'm curious to hear what you think vs. fresh.

 

[MixUp]

Don't be afraid to go off reservation with yeast in recipes, I regularly used 3x the amount , cold proofed and let it explode in the oven.

You can flatten butter with a big rolling pin, hold it by the barrel ...not the handle. and just tap it slowly.
Or get a baseball bat and cut the handle off.

That premuim yeast sounds like fresh cake yeast, cold water proofing etc.
I'll have to try it for croissant.

Wow, this stuff lives forever. My lab experiment of poolishes lined up on the counter is impressive. One I left out on the counter at (cold) room temp entirely. Another one, I refrigerated immediately overnight and pulled out the next morning. Very small test poolishes. 100g KAF AP, 100g water. Infinitesimal Premium yeast. It was such a tiny quantity of yeast it didn't even register on my precision scale, so we're looking at less than 0.1g.

The one left out on the counter, was bubbling by morning. Very bubbled by afternoon, about 17h. Kept bubbling all night. At 24h I stirred it down. By morning it was even more bubbly than the day before, 32h. I stirred it down again, and I swear within an hour, it was already starting to bubble again. We'll see if it manages to survive 48h at (cold) room temp. I was afraid if left too long unrefrigerated it would overact, starve and fail. I've never seen a yeast that durable, able to feed off what has got to be almost nil sugars by now. It's like it can eat itself...

The one I immediately refrigerated is a curious case. I took it out of the fridge after 8 hours. At 18 hours, it barely looked fermented. At 24 hours, it had some minor bubbling. At 32h it doesn't even look as bubbly as the room temp one did at 16 hours. Somehow the act of refrigerating it immediately had some kind of transformational effect on the yeast or the dough that has prevented it from properly fermenting afterward (yet a full dough fermenting for 18h or so in the same fridge location endures wonderfully, the yeast in the chilled poolish isn't dead as it's bubbling somewhat, and that long at that temp should have, even if the real problem is not adding enough yeast unlike the other one, given it enough time to rapidly multiply and get up to speed.)

I'm not sure what happened to that chilled poolish, but my lesson here is definitely: don't chill preferment. Ever. Unless it's sourdough. I don't really mess with sourdough levain. It's such a pain to maintain. Though I feel like my poolish is going to become a levain if it keeps up.