Tom: Yeast Question

TOm… my refrigerator was running too cold over the last couple of days and my yeast froze… Is it still usable? Its very rubbery…

Thanks.

Google says yes, you can freeze yeast.

http://www.ochef.com/84.htm

Your yeast has been frozen in the worst possible way, very slooowly. This creates large ice crystal formation within the yeast cells which have a severely damaging affect on the yeast cells and their ability to ferment the dough. Also, you are probably leaching out a fair amount of glutathione (a reducing agent much like L-cysteine) from the damaged yeast cells. This will have a softening affect upon the dough, creating still more problems, if inconsistent fermentation and rise of the dough wasn’t enough.
Pitch the damaged yeast. This might be a good time to change over to IDY. You can’t hardly hurt that stuff, and it keeps for a year or more when stored at room temperature so you aren’t using valuable refrigerated space for your yeast storage.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor