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This link claims that yeast contains gluten, which is understandable.

Yet today, a lot of people have a reaction to gluten that they are trying to avoid by becoming gluten-free. There are many brands of bread that sell gluten-free bread, made out of gluten-free grain.

When making my own bread, I want to use gluten-free yeast (and ideally, organic). These people sell organic quinoa yeast, which is gluten-free, but do not ship to the USA.

I am wondering what alternative exists that is gluten-free and organic and that one can find here in the USA.

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    skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4724/… + ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23648697 : Gluten is not per definition bad for you!
    – Thorst
    Commented Oct 1, 2015 at 11:21
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    I am very skeptic of these links ;) ;) a huge number of people are sensitive to gluten and they know that because they tried with and without, that the scientific community is late on the case or buyist is neither surprising nor new
    – MicroMachine
    Commented Oct 1, 2015 at 19:53
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    I didn't save the article but I read a study that showed that it was sometimes a psychological reaction to going gluten free that made people feel better - nothing to do with the gluten itself. I've also read about people saying they feel much better after going "gluten free" while continuing to eat a product that they didn't know was full of gluten. Also, another study I read got people who claimed to be gluten intolerant/sensitive to go on a gluten free diet and they had no improvement at all...
    – BunnyKnitter
    Commented Oct 6, 2015 at 21:36

2 Answers 2

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That very same source says:

The following yeasts are all gluten-free:

  • active dry
  • autolyzed (not autolyzed yeast extract – see below)
  • baker’s
  • nutritional

That includes just about any type of yeast that you'd use for baking.

"Brewer's yeast" is unique because it's typically harvested from previous batches of beer. Specific yeast strains have an impact on the finished beer's flavor, and brewers will cultivate those in hopes of replicating a certain flavor. This yeast contains gluten because it also contains remnants of the beer itself in addition to the yeast.

Yeast extract, which the source calls out as possibly containing gluten, is something else entirely and is typically used as an additive and flavor enhancer, not as a leavening agent.

Use the same yeast that you'd use for baking anything else. The grain is more important to ensuring that the finished bread is gluten-free; here is an extensive but non-exhaustive list.

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    "because it's typically harvested from previous batches of beer" - only few times, dozen at most, and most of brewer's yeast you can actually buy in store as a private person comes from a lab-grown culture, grown on nutrients delivered from the same grain beer is (probably, trade secrets) but not even close to the way beer is brewed. Much more oxygen. Much stricter generation control.
    – Mołot
    Commented Oct 3, 2017 at 9:01
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Just buy baker's yeast. Only brewers yeast might contain gluten because its a byproduct of beer.

The quinoa product you mention is simply quinoa flour with yeast added.

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  • I'm not sure I understand, isn't yeast made from wheat or in the case of beer, hops? You need grain to make yeast, don't you?
    – MicroMachine
    Commented Oct 1, 2015 at 10:19
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    No yeast is a fungus, you can grow it on any food medium. I used to live near a gigantic yeast factory and every day you could see trains of tanker trucks taking in molasses which is the growth medium of choice for commercial production.
    – user23614
    Commented Oct 1, 2015 at 10:50

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