Baking bread is one of life’s greatest pleasures. As most of you know, during the initial lockdown, majority of the planet was committed to baking bread and over excessively buying toilet paper. So if there is one thing that Covid19 taught us it’s that during the most somber, gruesome and challenging times of our lives, we – humans care only for baking bread and taking good care of our asshole.
INGREDIENTS FOR MAKING BREAD
There are four main ingredients for making bread: Flour, water, salt and yeast. Additionally, fats like olive oil can be added to increase the elasticity of the dough. The oil may be added simultaneously while kneading, or afterwards during fermentation so the dough slowly absorbs the fat.
Flour:
The first and foremost ingredient in making any type of bread is the flour. Often neglected, type of flour is a major key ingredient in baking. For a home baker, there are two main considerations when choosing the right flour: quality and protein.
Questionable producers tend to bleach flour with various chemicals to give it an artificial white appearance. I’m not saying you should sniff, pinch or lick the flour to test it’s quality, but care to simply read the label for any unusual substances such as peroxide, bromate, etc.
When you got your quality sorted out, the other key factor is the protein amount. For yeast bread, simply keep this rule in mind: the higher the protein content, the higher the potential rise. Most bread flours will range around 12-13% protein. All though this rule does not apply to whole wheat flour that has a much higher protein content up to 15%. Whole wheat flour contains ground bran, which when ground, has sharp edges that can penetrate through the strands of gluten in the dough, which is why whole wheat bread can be shorter and denser.
Salt:
What does it do, and how much salt should I use?
Salt plays a key role in baking bread. Taste wise salt is a natural additive – it gives the bread it’s distinctive taste and brings out the aroma from the wheat. You can tell if salt is present in a baked good simply by smelling it. If the smell is completely bland and “muddy like”, too little or no salt was most likely put in the dough.
Salt strengthens the gluten. Besides the taste, adding salt to bread strengthens the gluten strands formed when kneading the dough. The tighter these strands are, more effectively the dough will hold on to the carbon dioxide released during fermentation. (The release of the carbon dioxide is what makes those pretty picture perfect holes in the section cut of your loaf.)
Most importantly, salt controls the yeast fermentation, meaning it slows down the growth of the yeast in your dough. Without the presence of salt, yeast would go on a rampage and eat up all the sugars in the flour making the dough hard to work with, and initially collapse completely.
The most common amount of salt used for baking bread is 2% of salt mass to flour (e.g. 20gr of salt to 1000gr of flour). adding too little salt would make your bread taste bland and mushy, where as adding too much salt would greatly slow down the fermentation of the dough giving you little to no rise.
Water:
All though typically taken for granted, water is a major ingredient that is not to be overlooked when baking. The higher the hydration (amount of all liquids added to the dough) the softer the texture will be, thinner and crispier crust and larger hole pockets.
Besides the amount of water, another key factor is the temperature. Adding too cold water to your dough will greatly slow down the fermentation process in the dough which would make your folding and stretching later on pretty useless. Adding too warm water on the other hand would make the dough over ferment. So how to choose the right temperature? There are formulas easy to come by on the internet where you measure up the room, flour, and water temperature and add it all up in a equation, but if you’re satisfied with just baking a decent loaf, using 16-20*C water is more than sufficient for your needs.
Yeast:
Yeast is a living microorganism that feeds on sugar, converting it to alcohol and carbon dioxide through fermentation process. As the yeast feeds upon the sugar, carbon dioxide is released as a byproduct and fills thousands of balloon-like bubbles in the dough.
types of yeast:
There are two main types of yeast. Fresh yeast, always comes in square blocks and dry yeast that comes packaged in small granules.
Fresh yeast is thought to be the superior form of yeast by the professional bakers as it gives the bread a more robust flavor. The down side of fresh yeast is it’s rather short shelf life. It is to be bought and used within 2 weeks, keeping in mind it’s texture should be crumbly and not sticky while the color should be “creamy white”. Fresh yeast must first be activated by dissolving in warm water.
For home bakers, dry yeast is a go to yeast as you don’t have to worry about the shelf life and the quality of the product handled in the store. (i.e. you can buy a package of fresh yeast from your supermarket that doesn’t store them on the temperature needed to keep the yeast alive and find out it’s dead only after unwrapping it home.) Dry yeast is divided by Active and Instant dry yeast. Active dry yeast needs to be activated by dissolving in warm water like the fresh one whereas Instant dry yeast is dried more quickly and ground much finer so it activates quickly without the need of an activating agent.
For what type of yeast to use is completely up to you, try out different types and see what works best for you. I usually stick to using instant dry yeast.
Also, another type of yeast more than worth mentioning is homemade yeast used for sourdough bread, but I’ll cover that in future posts.
Now that we learned about all the ingredients needed to bake bread and how they react in given environment, it’s time to practice the knowledge gained.
KNEADING THE DOUGH:
Kneading is a process that helps distribute all the ingredients throughout the dough and incorporate air. But more importantly, kneading makes the proteins in the flour expand and form strands of gluten, responsible for giving bread it’s texture.
When kneading, duration is of more importance than technique. All though primal, duration is relevant to what type of flour you’re using, hydration, how much force you’re putting into, etc. Since it’s impossible to give an exact amount of time, smooth texture, not sticking to fingers or the surface, retraction when pinched with a finger are all signs of well kneaded dough.
PROOFING THE DOUGH:
Proofing is a process that activates the yeast in the dough. It’s during proofing that the yeast feeds off sugars in the dough, releasing the carbon dioxide to make the bread rise, as I early on described.
Proofing is broken down into 4 key steps.
Bulk fermentation: Occurs just after kneading. During this time, yeast does most of it’s work feasting on sugars. Bulk fermentation lasts for 2-3 hours.
Folding: Process that is executed during the bulk fermentation. Folding helps develop the gluten structure, redistribute the yeast and sugars, and even out dough temperature. Folding usually starts around 30 minutes into bulk fermentation and is repeated 3-5 times every 30 minutes.
Shaping: A step made after the bulk fermentation once rested per desire (i.e. overnight in the fridge). The dough is carefully shaped by hand or assisted via spatula and placed inside a well floured proofing basket or a container fitted with kitchen rag.
Final proofing: Occurs after the shaped dough has been placed inside the basket. (rough side facing up!) During this time the dough will rise up to twice it’s size.
BAKING THE BREAD:
Bread is mostly baked in two phases, a high heat phase that helps create the “oven spring” causing the bread to expand greatly during the first 10-15 minutes, and a lower temperature afterwards to bake the bread throughout without achieving a hard crust. Also strive to create steam in your oven by spraying the baking pan with water, tossing ice under the tray , or baking the bread in a Dutch oven to trap and circulate the steam.
