Yeast Wars: Active Dry vs. Instant Dry
My recipes have all called for Instant Dry yeast, and warned that if you used Active Dry yeast instead you should up the amount by about 25%. My SFBI class instructor also added that Active Dry yeast has quite a few dead yeast cells in it, and they sluff off other things (I forget what) that are bad for the protein structure. As of today I’m switching over from the jar of Active Dry that I bought to Instant Dry (aka “Bread Machine” aka “Rapid Rise”, both terms that scared me away before). No more arbitrary scaling up of ingredients to balance out the dead cells.
Active Dry vs. Instant Yeast