My experience (and I learned a big lesson) is that dumping ADY directly into the ingredients gave me a vastly different result than proofing it vs IDY directly in. I started my pizza making with ADY not knowing that there was IDY. I always followed the soak method until I noted people saying just dump the yeast in and that proofing wasn't needed. I then struggled with oddly flat and dense dough for about a month thinking I was screwing something up but the only thing I had really changed was not proofing the ADY first. I then learned that there was IDY and that was what people were talking about! I have not looked back.
This was true blind (dumbass) testing with the same brand of IDY and ADY.
I used to get yeast and I can't recall if it was ADY or IDY and proof it in warm water until I learned on Alton Brown's "Good Eats" that I didn't have to do that with IDY and stopped doing that.
So you use IDY now and just dump it in, correct? Do you put it in the flour and dump the flour in the water or do you put the IDY in the water then put the flour in? Or do you use a different procedure? Thanks.
