Yeast bread

Yeast bread here means dough raised with commercial Yeast as the main leaven. Sourdough uses a culture of wild yeast and lactic acid bacteria. Both are Fermentation. A Poolish or Biga does not make the dough "sourdough"; those are yeast preferments. Calvel writes both commercial-yeast French bread and levain bread as technical crafts ¹.

King Arthur Baking's desired-dough-temperature article is aimed at wheat-based yeast breads, with a workshop range near 75–78 °F after mixing; they say the same range is useful for wheat sourdoughs ². Instant yeast can go in cool water if it is mixed with flour first; they do not recommend exposing it directly to water cooler than 70 °F. Active dry yeast in cool dough is proofed in a little warm water in their method.

What to notice #

In baker's percent, yeast is a small line — about 1.2–1.25% of flour in King Arthur's lean examples — and still smaller inside a poolish ³. That is Inoculation, not a law. Yeast dough often moves faster than a mild levain dough at the same temperature; Retarding is how you buy calendar time.

Failure: calling every tangy loaf sourdough; or treating packaged yeast as immune to dough temperature. Very warm yeast dough in King Arthur's trial raced, then baked drier and bitter ². A Lean dough baguette and an enriched yeast bun are both yeast breads; they are not the same mix.