UKC

I've been happily making bread in my breadmaker for several years now.  That was until last week, when a loaf made to my regular tried and tested recipe came out looking more like a house brick.  The missus suggested that the machine hadn't kneaded the dough properly and TBH it did look a bit like that, as the bottom of the 'loaf' was ridged and swirled whereas they normally come out nice and flat underneath.

So I stripped down the mechanism and gave it a good clean and oil (with vegetable oil), reassembled it and tried again.  This gave pretty much the same result, although it had risen a bit more than the previous one.  By this time the missus was starting to agitate for a new breadmaker, but I decided to give it one more go - and got the same result again.

Then yesterday, while out doing the weekly shop and (to my shame) stocking up on shop bread to tide us over until the situation was resolved, I had a sudden thought: I started a new tin of Allinsons yeast last week: what if it was actually that that was the problem?  I'd not heard of such a thing before but I decided that the way to find out was to try one last time with a different brand.

It turned out to be unexpectedly difficult to find Doves Farm yeast, which is the brand I have used in the past with much the same results as I was used to getting with Allinsons.  However, I did manage to track some down in a small health food shop.  I kept my fingers crossed while the breadmaker toiled away at its last chance for redemption but lo and behold, when the pinger went off I found it had baked me a perfectly risen loaf.

I was blissfully unaware that a new packet of commercial dried yeast could turn out to be 'dead', but now I know better!  And, having dug into it a bit more on t'interweb, I know also know how to "proof" a new batch of yeast (see pics below).

I'm still quite surprised, though, that I'd never come across this problem before in the 20-odd years that I've been making bread - although at the same time I'm relieved that I managed to avoid having to shell out £200 for a new breadmaker!

I still don't know how common the problem is, though.  Have any of the other UKC bread makers (machine or manual) run in to this before?

Had a similar issue with bad sachet of brewer's yeast.. but only once. Don't think this is very common. But if you wake it up before adding (proof) for both bread and beer, you will at least get a warning if it doesn't wake up 

Maybe a coincidence, but my current tin of dried Allinsons’ yeast is not giving as good a rise as I was expecting. Both loaves and rolls. However, I manually make the bread so there are too many variables to think it was the yeast and I was assuming it was me. Got slightly better results using water hotter than I would have.

I’ll buy some new yeast to try.

The pics below don't 'tell' us poor fools how to prove yeast so what did you do? 

yeast definitely deteriorates with ages, and in my experience it happens before the expiry date.

Its not an expensive product - buy fresh supplies regularly 

I used the instructions I found here: https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/1513/what-to-do-about-yeast-tha...

You can proof your yeast to see if its still alive:

Heat approx. ½ cup (100ml) of water to about 115°F (45°C). Add a tablespoon (10g) or so of sugar, stir. Water should still be above 105°F (40°C). Add a teaspoon of yeast, stir. Within 5 minutes or so, the mixture should be thoroughly foamy.

If its not thoroughly foamy, yeast is bad (dead), dispose of it.

(Note: Metric conversions above are rounded, just like the imperial units. Don't use these conversions for baking, but proofing yeast doesn't need anything exact.)

Had similar problem with a "new" batch of Allinsons in the past. Another "new" batch worked fine.

I've never had a dead tin of yeast but I've had a few that seemed to be a bit poor. 

I did have a run of "bricks" but found that a new tin of yeast didn't help. That turned out to be a bad motor capacitor. It wasn't dead, just weak. A cheap fix, so if your £200 machine does fail, don't rush straight out for a new one.

sachets or ask for fresh yeast at a supermarket bakery?

Yep - same here. Has happened a few times with Allinson's sachets over the last 10+ years - seems like there's an occasional bad batch. Best to avoid buying too many boxes with the same date, just in case.

I wondered if it was to do with something happening in transit, maybe got too hot or frozen? No idea how robust dried yeast is.

My sourdough has been trucking for 9 years now and has never let me down

Same. I use live yeast in pretty much everything now. It’s properly great for pizza dough. I tell a lie. We went away for 3 weeks once and I had to make a new starter. 

Have you discovered freezing pizza bases yet? I make them in batches of 3 or 4 now. That was a game changer. Pizza is a quick and easy weekday thing.

I admit to serving pizza for 4 more often than once a week on occasion but I freeze the dough in balls, not as a stretched base.
The game changer in our house was when I began second proofing the dough balls individually under wet tea towels or in a banneton. I also stopped using 00 flour and changed to a good quality very strong Canadian white. The dough is super resilient to handling but still full of air. Nom. 
I’m actually taking the pizza oven camping with the kids this weekend with some defrosting dough balls and all the trimmings.