Where do you get yeast?

Blaine Parker

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Author of the award-winning cookbook, Free The Pizza! 10h

Where do you get yeast? What's the difference between different yeasts and is one type best for pizza dough?

You get yeast from the air! Yes, really. You can leave a container of flour and water open to the air, and it will eventually become populated by wild yeast. It takes about a week and a half or so for the water and flour mixture to begin bubbling with signs of life. It’ll look something like this:

You can then use that bubbly flour and water mixture to create a wild-yeast sourdough starter. And that leads to a wild-yeast pizza dough.

And then, you can make a wild-yeast pizza that looks like this:

In other words, you make a pizza that looks indistinguishable from any other really great pizza. I have great respect sourdough geeks. Personally, I have too much else going on in my life to worry about keeping my starter alive.

So, yeast from the air and sourdough is not the most convenient pursuit. The easier way to get yeast is at the supermarket. Supermarkets typically carry various kinds of dry yeast. There’s Active Dry Yeast (ADY) which is a product of the early 20th century. It works, but a more convenient product is the more contemporary Instant Dry Yeast (IDY), which doesn’t require blooming the way ADY does.

There is also something out there called “Pizza Yeast,” which I do not recommend. (I’ve made around 1,000 pizzas at home. Those made with so-called pizza yeast, which contains dough conditioners, have a kind of chemical taste that smacks of frozen pizza. If you’re going to the trouble of homemade pizza, I encourage doing it the way that tastes better.)

Some stores sell cakes of fresh yeast, which requires care. It also expires more quickly than dry yeast, so you need to use it fairly soon after purchase. And at the end of the day, you can claim bragging rights for using fresh yeast. I can’t guarantee you’re going to find it any more flavorful than a direct-leavened dough made with IDY and cold fermented for 72 hours. The real secret is in the fermentation. That’s where the complex flavors happen.

Whatever format of yeast you’re using to make pizza dough, you’ll be using the species Saccharomyces cerevisiae. That’s a species of yeast more commonly referred to as brewer’s yeast or baker’s yeast. Get your yeast however you can and in whatever form that works best for you, and be sure to give it time to do it’s job, and you’ll be a happy pizzamaker. Good luck!