Baking yeast at Whole Foods: $3 for 3 0.25 oz packets. $64/lb
Baking yeast at Restaurant Depot: $2.29 for a 1lb brick. $2.29/lb
Whole Foods costs 28 times as much. Yipe.
Safeway isn’t much better.
Costco, Sams Club and similar stores also have the 1lb brick of yeast. If you make more than 3 loaves of bread this year, it’s worth getting the large size. With my breadmaker, I make about 30 loaves/year. Rainbow also has bulk yeast.
Yeast lasts at least 1 year in the freezer… except for the yeast I got at Rainbow. I’m pretty sure it needs to be refrigerated and not frozen because twice now I got yeast there, made a loaf, froze the rest and the yeast was dead after.
March 17th, 2008 at 8:50 am
What type of yeast are you looking at? Instant? Active Dry? Fresh? Wild? Each has a different cost and stays good for varying amounts of time.
You can always catch/grow your own wild san francisco yeast with just water and flour and a few days and a little attention. Just google ’start wild yeast’ for many direction.
Michael Sprague actually turned me on to starting my own wild yeast. I made a panettone with wild NYC yeast that was awesome. The slight sourness added a complexity that you don’t find in store bought panettone.
March 25th, 2008 at 11:46 am
Hey Andre,
What I am comparing is
- Safeway Fleishmann Rapid Rise Yeast, $2.50 for 3 0.25oz packets
- Safeway Red Star Active Dry, $2.39 for 3 0.25oz packets
- Rainbow… umm, I’m not sure… Active Dry I think, bulk, about $4/lb if I recall
- Whole Foods.. I don’t recall the brand, Active Dry $3 for 3 0.25 oz packets
- Fleishmann 1 lb Instant Dry at Restaurant Depot
Yeah, I’ve done sourdough… I bought Geeza and San Francissco sourdough from Ed Wood who wrote “World Sourdoughs from Antiquity”, a really good book. I had the sourdough for a year or so. It was pretty neat. But it’s hard to do sourdough in a bread machine… and I associate making it with an three old girlfriends :-(
May 2nd, 2008 at 4:12 pm
Thanks for putting the prices up, people. I have a powerpoint I have to do at school, and it deals with recipes. =] Thanks again!
May 2nd, 2008 at 6:21 pm
You’re welcome, person. Tell us people more about your Powerpoint. The thought that you were assigned a Powerpoint presentation for school is bothersome. The Powerpoint format was flawed from the moment it was created.