Bread Baking
|
Below is an excerpt covering a few of the key ingredients in making bread (water, salt, flour, and yeast). This comes from a book on bread-baking with tons of information and recipes for different breads.
From the book: "Bread Baking for Beginners: The Essential Guide to Baking Kneaded Breads, No-Knead Breads, and Enriched Breads" Author: Bonnie Ohara Excerpt: How Bread is FormedEven from a scientific perspective, the baking of bread is fascinating. Proteins in flour are hydrated by water; strengthened by salt; developed by mixing, kneading, or folding; fermented with yeast; and finally, baked into something completely delicious. What is most important to understand is that bread is a living thing, and working with a living thing (much like working with plants, children, or animals) requires developing your intuition through practice and, even more importantly, patience and adaptability.
Ingredients |
|
Making a loaf of bread requires very few ingredients, so if you use the best quality you can find, you'll end up with better-tasting bread, but starting with what you have is all you truly need. Let's go over some specifics:
Water: Hydration is critical for dough. If your tap water is acceptable to drink, it will be just fine for making bread. However, tap water high in chlorine can have a negative effect on a new sourdough starter. If you simply fill a pitcher from the tap and let it sit out overnight, the chlorine will evaporate. Temperature is another key factor in bread baking, so the temperature of your water is important (see Temperature Calculation on page 21).
Salt: In bread baking, salt performs the important function of adding strength to dough. It also slows or inhibits the fermentation process, which lets the dough develop structure and flavor over time. Any baker who forgets the salt will have the unpleasant experience of dealing with gooey, sticky dough and will end up with a poorly flavored loaf of bread. Use whatever salt you like or already have in your home. I like to use sea salt, personally, but I have made bread with all kinds of salt (even with saltwater collected directly from the sea) with successful results.
Flour: As the heart and soul of bread, the type of flour you use will make a difference in the bread you bake. Pay attention to the amount of protein in the flour. The higher the protein, the more gluten there is in the flour, which you need to develop the structure of the bread.
Every brand of flour will have varying qualities within these levels of protein and gluten. Note, though, that it's not necessary to buy the most expensive flour to make quality bread, and it's not absolutely necessary to use bread flour in these recipes. Even though bread flour is specifically made for bread, I call for all-purpose flour in most of the recipes in this book because it's easy to find and I've had a lot of success using it. I feel that one of the best brands to use is King Arthur unbleached all-purpose flour. Although it's all-purpose flour, it is higher in protein than other brands, is of good quality, and is easily accessible at most stores. Bob's Red Mill is a wonderful choice for whole-wheat flour and for a wide variety of other whole-grain flours. They can also be found in most large grocery stores.
- from "Bread Baking for Beginners: The Essential Guide to Baking Kneaded Breads, No-Knead Breads, and Enriched Breads," by Bonnie Ohara
Water: Hydration is critical for dough. If your tap water is acceptable to drink, it will be just fine for making bread. However, tap water high in chlorine can have a negative effect on a new sourdough starter. If you simply fill a pitcher from the tap and let it sit out overnight, the chlorine will evaporate. Temperature is another key factor in bread baking, so the temperature of your water is important (see Temperature Calculation on page 21).
Salt: In bread baking, salt performs the important function of adding strength to dough. It also slows or inhibits the fermentation process, which lets the dough develop structure and flavor over time. Any baker who forgets the salt will have the unpleasant experience of dealing with gooey, sticky dough and will end up with a poorly flavored loaf of bread. Use whatever salt you like or already have in your home. I like to use sea salt, personally, but I have made bread with all kinds of salt (even with saltwater collected directly from the sea) with successful results.
Flour: As the heart and soul of bread, the type of flour you use will make a difference in the bread you bake. Pay attention to the amount of protein in the flour. The higher the protein, the more gluten there is in the flour, which you need to develop the structure of the bread.
- Pastry or cake flour has very low protein.
- All-purpose flour has medium protein.
- Bread flour has high protein.
Every brand of flour will have varying qualities within these levels of protein and gluten. Note, though, that it's not necessary to buy the most expensive flour to make quality bread, and it's not absolutely necessary to use bread flour in these recipes. Even though bread flour is specifically made for bread, I call for all-purpose flour in most of the recipes in this book because it's easy to find and I've had a lot of success using it. I feel that one of the best brands to use is King Arthur unbleached all-purpose flour. Although it's all-purpose flour, it is higher in protein than other brands, is of good quality, and is easily accessible at most stores. Bob's Red Mill is a wonderful choice for whole-wheat flour and for a wide variety of other whole-grain flours. They can also be found in most large grocery stores.
- from "Bread Baking for Beginners: The Essential Guide to Baking Kneaded Breads, No-Knead Breads, and Enriched Breads," by Bonnie Ohara