man the great yeast taste is in the type of yeast. when I was a kid they sold live cake yeast at all drug stores and groceries. the dry pack yeast today is trash compared to the cake type. I've read that if you live near a brewery you might be able to get yeast from them.
mom used to make those heavy yeast rolls and I sure do miss those.
bad thing about being real old is you see a lot of good things go by the wayside.
Actually I just looked and my local grocery sells brewer's yeast but mostly as dietary supplements. I wonder if that would work as bread yeast?
On-line, brewer's yeast is readily available.
Not sure what you mean by "cake type yeast". Do you mean yeast that is bred for cakes or do you mean cakes of yeast (solid blocks) rather than the normal granular form in the little packets?
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To be honest I've never made yeast rolls from scratch but at one low end steak house, Ryan's, I did some shifts in the bakery and the yeast rolls were out of this world. Odd thing with the lower end steak houses as they seem to have the best yeast rolls. Quincy's was another that had great rolls. From taste and texture probably the same mix used by Ryan's.
Just to be clear... Are you saying that just using a lot more yeast packets won't do it but brewer's yeast would? Actually, thinking about it, just using extra regular yeast packets would probably just result in a lighter, more 'air filled' bread.
Sigh, another of my rambles follows. Still it may of interest for those that think you have to pay a fortune to get a decent steak...
Actually some of the low end houses have pretty good meat. The first house I worked as a steak cook was a Ponderosa Steak House when I was in high school back in 1971-1972. They actually imported organic beef from Australia packaged in Papaya juice to tenderize. They were also one of the cleanest houses I ever worked along with Ryan's. As to Ponderosa's they served foil wrapped baked taters. When the tater trays were being set up in the back kitchen there was no problem if you dropped a tater as long as it ended up in the trash. If you got caught picking one up from the floor and putting on the cooking tray there was no question; you were fired even it it was already foil wrapped. Ponderosa was also an open grill place. By open grill I mean that the steak grill was right out in the open for any and all customers to see.
In a way Ryan's was even cleaner. I worked there for a year when I first moved from Texas to Florida. The steak grill area was all ceramic tile on floor and walls. Every night we had to pull the grill away from the wall and the whole area was pressure washed EVERY NIGHT.
After working as a steak cook at low end, medium and somewhat high end places the lower end houses have proven to be the cleanest. You would expect the opposite but, from my experience, I'll go to the lower end houses before the medium or higher level places unless I'm trying to impress a really pretty lady.
From what I've experienced cooking the meat quality is not a lot different and the lower end houses tend to be MUCH cleaner.
Sadly I quit one cooking job at what was supposed to be a much higher level house. I saw another cook knock a steak off a rack and he just left it on the floor. I literally saw him step on the steak at least three times. An order came in for the cut and he picked it up off the floor and put it on the grill. I went to management and was a bit shocked at the response. The response was something like, "Ya, and what is the problem? Better than throwing it away and the customer will never know". I quit on the spot.
