u/Busy_Actuator6376

I'm making a chocolate and strawberry cake for a birthday and I need to use strawberry buttercream as this is what was requested. Problem is all the recipes I can find use freeze dried strawberries, but I don't have access to any.
My question is could I use something else instead of freeze dried strawberries? Will strawberry jam, or a strawberry reduction work?

Edit: Thank you all for the suggestions! I'm not in the US and while Amazon delivers here, it takes its sweet time and they would probably arrive in 10 days or so. Meanwhile the cake is due on Sunday. There are specialised shops that carry freeze dried strawberries, but none that I can get to before tomorrow when I want to use them and I've spent the past couple of days exhausting my options trying to find freeze dried strawberries and I didn't manage, hence why I'm looking for an alternative.
I think I'll try roasting strawberries and then reducing their syrup and add that to my smbc. Hopefully it works!

I started making sandwich loaves on Thursday, I mixed my flour and water and left it to autolyse supposedly for an hour but I got distracted and when I remembered it I didn't have time to get back to it. It's been sitting on my counter since then and I'll only manage to deal with it later today. Is it going to be okay or should I just admit defeat and start over? There's no yeast in it at the moment, just flour and water.