The "yeasty taste" from your grandmother's rolls came from "over proofing"...that is letting the rolls rise until they were almost on the point of collapse....and if they did collapse, just re work the rolls and let rise again.
Extra yeast won't give you that elusive smell and flavor, it comes from working yeast and the dough it works in.
Oh and besure to mix your dough, allow to rise, punch down, allow to rise, punch down again before you shape and allow to rise one last time.

Interesting, Linda. In my own experience, the more yeast, the more the yeast flavor.

ETA: I just checked around the 'net. Yep. Most are talking about eliminating yeasty flavor, but some are adding it in. They agree. More yeast, more yeast flavor.

Not that Linda is wrong about the over-rising. That'll do it too.

BTW, that's why take-home fresh pizza dough from the grocery store tastes so yeasty. They dump a bunch of yeast in hope you won't kill it all before you use it. :)

I don't think that I have noted a yeasty flavor from my rolls. I almost always use a double rise but have sometimes been in a rush and used single rise with extra yeast. I have over risen rolls and with extra yeast made extra fluffy rolls. I think they all had similar flavor. They usually were enriched rolls with a little fat, some sugar etc and perhaps some milk. At least recently, and probably always, I have used Active Dry Yeast. I am not certain because I just use what ever COSTCO has available for its bulk bag yeast.

Interestingly, King Arthur has this to say: Flavor. Many bakers report a difference in flavor
between active dry and instant or fast-rising yeast, with ADY lending
bread milder, less aggressively “yeasty” taste.

So, perhaps one needs to use Instant Yeast rather than Active Dry Yeast.

That's interesting. I mostly use ADY when I'm not using wild (sourdough), and in the stone age I used fresh cake yeast, so I can't say about Instant, but there were a couple of references on my web search about feeding the yeast sugar to make it rise fast and getting a yeasty flavor. I didn't look closely enough to see if they were also being intentionally overrisen, or if it was the speed itself that they thought was giving the yeast flavor.

Cooper, add a little extra yeast and let it get too big and punch it down, and you should get there, especially if you use Instant or Bread Machine yeast. :)

That's interesting, chas045. I just made yeast rolls for a family dinner and used the fast rising yeast. I let them rise twice and then punched down and refrigerated till next day and did a couple more rises because of reading that the refrigeration time makes them have more flavor. I jus thought they tasted very yeasty (which I didn't care for). Maybe it was the fast yeast rather than the method. I normally use ADY, rather than the fast rising kind.

This is all a foreign language to me, but I'd be happy to taste test your yeast rolls!!

Wow! Thanks for all the information! It's kind of a nostalgia thing and I just haven't been able to nail it down. I figured now that I found a chocolate pie recipe that tastes just like hers, I would tackle the rolls! Thanks again all. :)

Trying to describe a "flavor" is like trying to describe "blue".
adding more yeast makes bread rise faster....Adding less yeast means your bread simply takes longer to rise. Adding more yeast MAY give you the taste you are searching for because the bread rises so fast that you are likely to over proof it.
Is the flavor you seek like the smell when you stir yeast into water to proof it? Or is it more the like the smell of a puffy loaf on the counter ready to go into the oven?
When I think about "yeasty taste" it's more a combination of the yeast itself and the tang from the acid it produced while rising and bit of alcohol, a byproduct of the yeast metabolism....your experience may vary.
Yeast grows and multiplies when fed.....that's one reason why the 2nd rise is always faster than the first. So a pinch of yeast is enough to leaven 4 cups of flour....if you wait long enough. Anyone make that NY Times recipe where you add 1/4 tsp of yeast and let it rise for 24 hours?

And posting "What you found on the web" means not a thing without also citing the source. I can find about any "fact" you want on the web...much of it just someone's assumption with no fact nor experience to back it.

"When I think about "yeasty taste" it's more a combination of the yeast itself and the tang from the acid it produced while rising and bit of alcohol, a byproduct of the yeast metabolism." That's it exactly!

I do make pizza dough with just a touch of yeast and 24 hours to rise! :)

Oh, for heaven's sake, Linda! I was looking for general info not writing a footnoted treatise. I was looking on baking sites like KA as well as advice forums, not hipster blogs. It wasn't meant to be authoritative. Just what other people had to say about it. I think it's also in some of my bread books, but I wouldn't cite those without checking. Plus, as I said from the first, personal experience using the same recipe.

Cooper, the alcohol comes as some of the yeast is exhausted, so do try Linda's method.

The alcohol produced has nothing to do with exhausted yeast. It is a product of fermentation, along with CO2 which is the bubbles you see....however when too much alcohol remains in the mixture it becomes toxic and the yeast dies. The dying yeast does not produce alcohol, the alcohol produced by the action of yeast on sugars causes the yeast to die.
Source bio ninja from a TED talk.

Interesting. My source was baking experts over the years, but I don't doubt your bio geek. :)

cooper8828

I love the yeasty taste also which led me to your query. if you have experimented and found a recipe that tasts like grandma’s would you please share? Thank you.

In light of cjas-45's comments from King Arthur about difference in taste between active dry and instant or fast-rising yeast, I wonder if Cooper8828's grandmother used refrigerated cake yeast and that made the difference in taste.

4 year old thread ... yeast became sourdough

I've read that if you refrigerate your dough so that it has a slow rise, the bread will be more flavorful. They don't explain what flavorful means. Is it the yeast flavor that the OP was searching for?

I never did find a way to make them taste like what I was looking for. She used yeast from the individual packets, not sure if instant or fast rising. Sigh.

I've had a lot of fun trying out different recipes, though. The quest continues, but at a quite languid pace.

Instant yeast is much newer than ADY, if that helps. I learned to make bread with cake yeast and there was no flavor difference when we changed to granulated ADY, as long as we handled it the same way as we did the cake yeast. At first the cake yeast was more reliable, but now the dry yeast is, if it's been stored properly. IDY is the same yeast as ADY, just ground up to make it bloom faster.

Cooper, good luck on your continued quest. I recently figured out how to get coleslaw to taste like my mother's. It's not extraordinary, just right. Fullfilling those memories is very satisfying.

You might try one of those recipies from yesteryear for "refrigerator rolls". That is the kind of thing that my mom used to make and they are, indeed, yeasty tasting. It was kind of the thing back in years gone by. Now it seems that so many strive for an '"artisian " bread where the yeast taste is not foremost and the dough has fermented a bit and the initial amount of dried yeast is much less. Some of those artisian breads use only maybe half a teaspoon, or less of yeast, as opposed to a yeasty bread that uses up to a tablespoon for the same.

Maybe that IS one difference, the amount of yeast used in the first place.

My grandmother, born in the late 1800s used to declare that we used too much yeast in our breads. She was accustomed to the kind of bread that uses a small amount and it is nurtured, maybe even with a sourdough or some manner of starter.

I understand what you are looking for.

When I want a yeasty roll, I make sure to use all white flour, some oil and some sugar. A bit of sweet enhances the joy of the yeasty flavor.

A yeasty piece of fresh hot bread is comfort food, for sure. It has it's place on the table.