re: Making Artisanal Bread

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Commercial yeast being just your standard bread, but sourdough is through wild yeast?

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Commercial yeast is packaged yeast. You buy it in either compressed fresh cake form (not common) or granular (very common). The granular stuff is what most people think of when you say "yeast"....it comes in "active dry" and "instant" formulations. The instant is a super-concentrated yeast--you need less of it to achieve the same thing as active dry yeast. Instant is sold in 1-lb bricks at Sams/Costco for about $3.50/lb. Way cheaper than the three packets of Fleischmans in a strip from the supermarket.

Wild yeast is just a culture of naturally occurring yeast. Mix flour & water, keep feeding it a little every day, discarding the excess, and eventually, the yeast population will grow strong enough to raise a loaf of bread. There are many, many feeding schedules, kinds of flours, temperature manipulations, and other variations to keeping sourdough cultures going....and just as many ways to incorporate it into various breads.

When I bake for commercial sale, I use the Forkish style long, cold fermented loaves made w/commercial yeast. The commercial yeast is very predictable (important when you're doing volume production), and an overnight cold bulk fermentation of the dough produces some nice secondary lactobacterial fermentation important for flavor. So even commercial yeast can be tweaked for maximum flavor...there's no need to go to all levain/wild yeast to achieve a nuanced loaf.