Trouble with yeast

Okay, I understand the title of this post may be a bit disturbing. We're discussing yeast but of the baking kind (wink). I hate it!! To this day I have never been able to make a successful yeast bread or roll. I failed the other day while trying to make a pumpkin yeast bread...it didn't rise and was an extremely condensed hard bread. Ew. I'm back at it again today in between football games.

Let's try this recipe for homemade cinnamon rolls. But first I'm sharing this helpful tutorial on working with yeast that will be assisting me  along the way!

Directly from Melskitchencafe

First a quick note about the difference between active dry yeast and instant yeast. These are the two main forms of yeast called for in all of my bread/roll recipes.

Active dry yeast is a dormant form of yeast and needs to be rehydrated or proofed prior to using it in a recipe. This means that the yeast needs to be dissolved in warm water (a bit of sugar helps the yeast to activate more quickly since sugar acts as a food for the yeast) and left for a few minutes to activate before using in the recipe.

Instant yeast is different than active dry yeast in that it does not need to be rehydrated or proofed prior to using in a recipe. The granules of instant yeast are smaller than active dry yeast and you can add the yeast directly in with all the other dough ingredients without letting it activate in warm water first. 

Here is a visual of what yeast should look like before and after proofing.

This yeast has just been added to the water and you can still see some of the granules sitting at the top.

After about 10 minutes, the yeast/water/sugar mixture now looks like this. See how the yeast has bubbled and foamed? This is the main indicator that the yeast has properly proofed and will work in the yeast dough you are making.

Some of the yeast bread and roll recipes I have on my site call for active dry yeast, others call for instant yeast.

When making a yeast dough, the key is probably an obvious one – the softer the dough, the more tender the resulting baked bread. This doesn’t mean your dough should be the consistency of banana bread batter. After all, flour is an important part of a yeasted dough. Instead, the dough should have a slight tackiness to it but still be pliable and smooth.

Click HERE to continue to see how a recipe should look throughout the process.