Getting from Flour & Water to a Loaf of Bread
Bread making/baking can seem alternately simple/easy and complex/complicated. On one hand, bread is made of just four ingredients: flour, water, salt and yeast. Four of the most common ingredients come together to create one loaf. Nothing special, nothing fancy (unless you want); nourishing, satisfying and delicious. On the other hand, four ingredients is not a lot to work with to create nourishing, satisfying and delicious food. How do you get flavor, strength, leavening and texture from such simple ingredients? All within a reasonable and consistent time frame?
I personally vacillate in my thinking of bread baking (of course, its typically when things go wrong that it seems like an unfathomable process to me). Perhaps it should be described as simple, but not easy. And complex, not complicated. It is the push/pull between these two extremes that keeps me coming back and baking more and more. It is an irresistible challenge and while the process has become clearer and more predictable over the years, each batch of bread is different and has its own idiosyncrasies that need to be handled in their own particular ways.
So how does it happen? Bread baking breaks down into roughly 12 steps and almost each step has vagaries and nuances that need to be understood to produce high quality bread. Now don’t get me wrong, one can make bread that is edible and probably pretty tasty without really understanding what’s going on. But to go from passable bread to something truly outstanding, it really helps to have a deep understanding of the physical, biological and chemical changes taking place within your dough.
I’ll highlight a few of the first steps and follow up on other steps in future posts.
1. Mixing - Mixing can be as easy as you want to make it or as difficult. Many recipes call for adding all ingredients into a mixer and then kneading or mixing for a certain amount of time. Others call for just mixing flour and water, letting that rest for an hour and then mixing again with salt and yeast. Others call for mixing the flour, salt and yeast with only a portion of the water, waiting and then adding the rest of the water. All of these methods result in different consistencies and characteristics to the dough. They allow you to make improbably wet doughs or create a dough that is strong, but barely mixed, which maintains the maximum amount of flavor.
The point of mixing is to hydrate the flour and yeast. Hydration activates the yeast, getting them to start breaking down the wheat into sugars (releasing flavor) and producing acid and carbon dioxide as byproducts (more flavor and leavening). The kneading/mixing motion of the hydrated dough also combines two proteins in wheat to produce gluten, a strong network of fibers that provides structure to bread.
2. Bulk Fermentation - After the mixing period, the dough must relax and have time to accumulate flavor and leavening. The fermentation period is typically for 1-4 hours and can often go longer if the dough is retarded in the refrigerator. The cold temperature causes the yeast to slow their activity and in some cases go completely dormant. This results in a different and often more desirable flavor profile to the dough.
3. Preshaping/Shaping - A typical batch of dough for a home baker results in 2-5 loaves depending on their size. The entire batch of dough is fermented during the bulk fermentation stage. During the preshaping/shaping stage, the dough is divided into equal weights. Many times the dough will not easily go into its final shape; however, dough does have a tactile memory. By preshaping the dough pieces into similar but less rigid forms as the final shape, the dough has a chance to “learn”. Preshapes include loose boules (the preshape for boules and batards) and cylinders (which are the preshape for a baguette). The dough needs to rest 20-30 minutes between the preshape and the final shape.
Ok, that’s a lot of bread process to absorb at one time. More next time.
This week’s breads are shown below:
Walnut Raisin Boules
Fresh Basil Focaccia in the Dappled Afternoon Sun
Sesame, Poppy, Onion and Everything Bagels
Oh, Bagel…
Now, I do not put baked good selections into the weekly CSB box if I have not thoroughly vetted the formulas. This means I have successfully made the item at least twice and consider it of good enough quality to give it to all my subscribers, for whom I keep the highest standards.
And then came the dastardly bagel…that chimera of my bread world; an inscrutable, devious foe who laughs in my face when I most need him there for me. In all my test batches, he was beautiful, puffy and everything you would expect a bagel to be; I confidently pushed forward and put them as a choice in this week’s box.
And then came Tuesday…
After wrangling with 48 bagels that needed to be refrigerated over night (do you know how much space that takes?), I woke up at 6am, filled my canning pot with the equivalent of a bathtub’s worth of water and waited to boil my bagels. And waited….and waited…and waited…give me a break, its a big pot of water.
Ok, so it was boiling, I dropped my first 4 bagels in and watched as they collapsed. My perfectly shaped and perky donuts caved in on themselves, overwhelmed by the pressure of the boiling water or maybe my expectations. I tried the next batch, same thing…and so it went for the next 4 hours and 44 bagels. Feeling devastated and incredibly embarrassed about having to give these to CSB members, I threw out those I didn’t need and husband coined the term “Looks Aren’t Everything Bagels”. Supportive CSB members even suggested that the taste was so good, perhaps I should say I invented a new type of bread and not worry about the whole bagel designation.
As bagels were on the menu for the next two days of the box, post-CSB drop-off and Ooga bake sale, I went about trouble-shooting. I tweaked here; I amended there and come Wednesday morning, my perky bagels held their shape and were significantly closer to regular bagels. Success! (For those of you interested in what happened, the protein content of my flour was too low and I overfermented my sponge).
So, apologies again to the Tuesday crowd for the Looks for Everything Bagels; you will be receiving a complimentary set of bagels next week. To everyone else, did you like the bagels? How about the baguettes and brownies?
UPDATE: Regardless of how that first batch of bagels came out, I had at least one fan. This is one subscriber’s son enjoying the flattened bagel; I really couldn’t ask for any more validation that this.
Baguettes, Bagels and Brownies for Haiti!
I figure its time to bring out some old-fashioned ideas that may seem quaint but also may just get the job done. That’s why I love the idea of bringing back Victory Gardens, home canning, making your own cheese, and baking bread. And the traditional bake sale that has been relegated to the often uninspiring, but precious efforts of 2nd graders seems like something I can also get behind.
And so in the tradition of community pulling together in times of crisis, whether it be scrap metal collecting and rolling bandages in WWII or Prop. 8 protest rallies and grassroots Obama-campaign organizing, I am running a multiple day bake sale from Tuesday, January 19th through Thursday, January 21st. Each day I will be providing baked goods at various locations and all profits will go to Doctors without Borders to support on-going relief efforts in Haiti. Tuesday I will be in San Francisco’s Financial District; Wednesday goods will be sold at UC Davis with a husband and brother-in-law manning the sales in their respective departments; and Thursday I will be selling Berkeley.
Contact me if you’re interested in purchasing some baked goods to support the relief efforts and please spread the word.
