Convert between fresh, active dry and instant yeast — and between baking powder, baking soda and cream of tartar — with the ratios that actually work.
In Portuguese the word "fermento" covers two things that have nothing in common except that they make dough rise. Biological yeast — fermento biológico — is a living fungus, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, that eats sugar, produces carbon dioxide and alcohol, and needs time and warmth to do its work. Chemical leavening — fermento químico — is an acid-base reaction triggered by moisture and heat that happens in minutes and needs no living organism at all. They are not interchangeable: putting baking powder in bread dough produces a dense, metallic-tasting brick, and putting yeast in cake batter produces something that takes three hours to rise and tastes of bread. A recipe that says "fermento" without the qualifier is usually chemical if it is a cake and biological if it is bread, but the word alone is not enough — and swapping one for the other does not change the result slightly, it ruins it. That is why this page splits them into two separate panels and converts within each family, never between them.
Within the biological family there are three forms sold in Brazilian supermarkets. Fresh yeast — fermento fresco, the block in the refrigerated section — is the most perishable: it lasts about two weeks in the fridge, freezes badly, and you can tell it has lost strength when the edges darken or dry out. Active dry yeast is granulated and shelf-stable, but it needs to be "proofed" — dissolved in warm water at about 40 °C for five to ten minutes — before it goes into the dough, because the granulation process kills part of the cells and the survivors need waking up. Instant yeast, also called rapid or quick-rise, is milled finer, has a higher proportion of live cells, and goes straight into the flour with no proofing step. The standard bakery proportion for the three is 1 : 0.40 : 0.33, meaning thirty grams of fresh yeast can be replaced by twelve grams of active dry or ten grams of instant. Sources genuinely disagree on the active-dry-to-instant ratio: some treat them as gram-for-gram equivalents, others cut the instant by a quarter. The page follows the Fleischmann Brasil proportion and shows the published range so you can decide where to land.
On the chemical side, baking powder — fermento em pó — is itself a blend of baking soda (sodium bicarbonate), an acid (usually cream of tartar or sodium aluminium sulphate) and a starch that keeps them dry. If you run out of baking powder, you can replace each teaspoon with a mix of about a quarter-teaspoon of baking soda plus half a teaspoon of cream of tartar, mixed just before use — the powder is essentially those two already blended. The reverse does not work: baking soda alone needs an acid already in the batter — buttermilk, yoghurt, lemon juice, natural cocoa — or the cake rises unevenly and tastes soapy. The usual proportion is one to one and a half teaspoons of baking powder per cup of flour; more than that does not make the cake rise higher, it makes it rise too fast, collapse, and leave a metallic aftertaste from the unreacted soda. Everything here runs locally in your browser; no ingredient or amount is sent to any server.
Biological yeast: fresh × 0.40 = active dry; fresh × 0.33 = instant. Equivalently, active dry × 2.5 = fresh; instant × 3.0 = fresh. Chemical: 1 tsp baking powder ≈ ¼ tsp baking soda + ½ tsp cream of tartar.
No. They are completely different mechanisms — one is a living organism that needs hours, the other is a chemical reaction that happens in minutes. The result, the texture and the flavour are nothing alike. This page deliberately does not convert between the two.
A common proportion is 20-30 g of fresh yeast per kilo of flour, which is 8-12 g of active dry or 7-10 g of instant. Enriched doughs (with butter, eggs, sugar) use the higher end because fat and sugar slow the yeast down.
Slightly. Fresh yeast can add a faint creaminess, and active dry yeast sometimes has a stronger yeasty flavour because some of the cells are dead. The bigger difference is rising time: slower fermentation develops more flavour, so using less yeast and letting the dough prove longer changes the bread more than the type does.
Probably weakened. Fresh yeast should be uniformly pale and break cleanly. Darkened or dry edges mean it has lost strength, and the dough will take longer to rise. If it smells sour or has visible mould, discard it.
Because more gas is not better. Excess baking powder makes the batter rise too fast, the structure cannot hold, and it falls. The metallic aftertaste is the leftover sodium bicarbonate that had no acid to react with. The usual proportion is 1 to 1.5 teaspoons per cup of flour — more than that rarely helps.
No. The conversion ratios and the reference table are embedded in the page. No data is uploaded or stored.
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